


Unscheduled Broadcasts

by Routcliffe



Series: Fortryllelse og Bakverk [2]
Category: Ylvis
Genre: Gen, No Sex, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-11 08:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 111,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4427906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Routcliffe/pseuds/Routcliffe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine years ago, Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker accidentally got a glimpse of a fabulous hidden Norway that few humans ever see.  Then the magic wore off, and the brothers returned to their not-really-all-that-mundane lives and found even bigger success.  But not everyone has been so lucky, and now some of their old friends are asking for help.  </p><p>Thus it is that Bård and Vegard are plunged back into a world of warring lios alfar and svartalfar, nisse and trolls, the wolf Fenrir and Odin the Allfather.  From the aisles of IKEA to the halls of Asgard, the danger is greater, the stakes are higher, and the brothers will need everything they've got in order to survive.  </p><p>There’s just three little hitches: 1) They don't remember anything from last time.  2) The people trying to kill them are really poor losers, with a god on their side and a doomsday weapon in reserve.  3) The changelings didn't fool their wives for even a second.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Inklings and Whispers

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to Unaired Episodes (a work that I'm not entirely sure should have had a sequel, but the brain gnaws on what the brain gnaws on). I've tried to strike a balance between giving enough exposition to make it stand on its own and not boring everyone to tears. Still, if you were planning on reading Unaired Episodes and haven't yet, it should probably come before this one. 
> 
> I'm thinking to release a longish chapter (~5000 words) two or three times a week. 
> 
> I'll do the full acknowledgements when the whole thing is up, but for the moment I am just generally grateful to everyone and everything, including you.

> _Q: If you could change one great thing in the world, what would it be?  
>  _
> 
> _Bård Ylvisåker: I think I'd make it so that nobody was afraid.  
>  _
> 
> _\- VGTV, pre-_ I Kveld Med Ylvis _24-hour live feed_

##### Border trouble / Porridge with Tomte / Magnus notices a teapot / A casual nebula / A blow-by-blow account of the spring special / Old times' sake

_November, 2015_

Bård Ylvisåker had read that there was a wolf at the heart of the world, chained and seething and slavering, poised to devour the Earth at the end of time. Until this morning, he had been certain that this was a myth. 

Now, however, he was pretty sure that this wolf had crawled into his sinuses and died.

He would feel okay when he got to work--he always did--but right now, in the feeble morning light, all he wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep for another four or five hours. Instead, he peeled the side of his face off the pillowcase, wrestled against the gravitational pull of the mattress until he reached escape velocity, shuffled into the bathroom, and turned on the light. 

It took a glass of water, a hot shower, and no fewer than five kleenexes (kleenices?) to be able to breathe through his nose again. When he was done, he swiped the steam off the mirror and took a look at himself. His eyes were glassy with fever. His nose was red and his cheeks were flushed; the rest of his face was waxy pale. 

Maria had come in while he was in the shower, and was moving around behind him. "Hey," he said scratchily, turning. 

The bathroom was empty.

He checked the mirror again. There was someone there, he saw out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked full on, he couldn’t see anyone.

He looked back and forth so many times that he got dizzy and had to sit on the edge of the tub to complete the rest of his _toilette_. There was someone in here with him. He could feel it. "Maria?" he called, weakly. He tried to be a bit louder. "Maria!" he squeaked.

"Papa?" The bathroom door opened and his son poked his head in.

"Hi, Jens. Where’s your mama?"

"She’s downstairs making breakfast." Jens smiled, and gave an enthusiastic wave at the vanity. "I thought you were gone already."

"Soon," Bård said, leaning against the shower tiles. "It might take me a little bit more time to get going today, though. Papa’s not feeling very well."

"Not you," Jens said. "The Lady."

Ah, yes. The Lady, who lived in both of the upstairs bathtubs. Bård had never been sure whether the fact that his young son’s imaginary friend was a naked woman should be a source of pride or deep alarm. "Where was she supposed to have gone?"

"She winters in Spain," Jens explained. "She said goodbye yesterday." He appeared to be listening. "But she’s back to redo the wards, because she had border trouble and she doesn’t like the way things look here. And she says to tell you to be careful, Papa. It looks like you’re on--" The little boy frowned, and then folded his hands together and solemnly recited, "--somebody’s list of people to pay attention to." 

Bård flashed him a weary smile. Border trouble? Wards? Wintering in Spain? It seemed like just last week that Jens had been watching _Ella Bella Bingo_. Where was the kid getting this stuff? "I’ll be careful, Jens. You don’t have to worry about me. Go down and have your breakfast."

"Okay, Papa. Bye again, Lady. See you in March!" The boy turned and gave a little wave before turning around and going back downstairs.

Bård leaned his head against the tiles again. "Jens, Jens, Jens. Should I be concerned?"

_Not about him._

Bård sat bolt upright. "Who said that? Is someone in here?"

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her reflected in the mirror, shimmering silver and unapologetically naked. The worst of it was, he knew her face, although he couldn’t say how. 

_Hello again, Bård._

"Who...? How...?" He turned around. No one else was in the room. 

In the mirror, he saw her reach out a hand to touch his forehead. He closed his eyes before she made contact, but a chill rattled his teeth. 

_Just as I thought. It’s the fever. You really ought to be in bed. While I’ve got you here, though, please do be careful. They remember you, even if you don’t remember them. If they decide that you’re a threat--and it takes very little for them to do that these days--then none of you are safe._

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," Bård said, holding his head. He heard a whine creeping into his voice, and hated himself a little for it until he remembered that he was bloody sick in his own bloody bathroom and if some bloody water-sprite was going to talk bloody nonsense to him he would whine if he bloody well pleased. 

_Quite so. Just be careful. You have been an impeccable host. I would hate to see anything happen to you._

Bård made an inarticulate noise of misery and frustration, and hauled himself up using the towel rack. He staggered out towards the bedroom to get dressed for the day. He stumbled at the door, and would have hit his head on the mirrored corner of the medicine cabinet, but at the last moment something like a dash of cold water made him jerk his head back, and he just missed it. 

Somehow, he managed to put on clothes and drink a cup of tea--he did _not_ kiss Maria goodbye--and drive himself to work. He was feeling vaguely humanoid by the time he got to the office. 

Vegard, engaged in conversation with the office manager Kamilla, gave him the usual nod as he walked in the door. But then he excused himself, and crossed the room, and took Bård gently by the elbow, and started to steer him back towards the door. 

"What?" His voice was nearly back to normal now, and he was proud of himself.

"You look like hell. You’re going home. Jan, can you drive Bård home?"

"Vegard, I’ll be fine. I just need to get into it and I’ll be fine."

"No, no, no."

Bård felt secretly relieved, but they did have a lot to get done before the next airing, and now that they were doing the special in March there was another pile of stuff to arrange, and he felt honour-bound to protest. "You did a whole show like this in Stockholm. All I have to do is shuffle papers around and think of funny things. Considering the woman I hallucinated in my bathroom this morning, I’ll be hilarious."

Vegard snorted at this. "I made seventeen people sick in Stockholm, and it was their choice after I warned them; this is an office full of people who can’t leave. In my capacity as management’s representative on the joint health and safety committee, and as the older brother, I order you to stop spreading pestilence and go home. Rest up so that you can get to rehearsals." 

It would be very nice to go home and curl up and watch trash TV. Bård let a faint, resigned smile cross his lips.

Vegard patted his arm. "Go home, curl up, and watch bad TV. We need you for Thursday."

Bård nodded, and let Jan drive him home. By the time he had installed himself on the couch in front of the television, swaddled in blankets, with a steaming mug of tea next to him, he had forgotten all about this morning’s conversation.

***

_December, 2015_

The human brain is a wonder of evolution, not only in terms of its ability to take in information and process it so that it fits into elaborate conceptual frameworks, many of which are held in tension, but also in terms of its ability to leave information out: to focus, to ignore, to exclude noise and rationalize anomalies based on those frameworks. Even the most ordinary mind has highly developed filters to prevent confusion and overload.

Vegard Ylvisåker had been gifted with an extraordinary mind, and he had become aware, over the years, that his filters were a little different from those of most of the people around him. On the one hand, it must be nice to be able to pick out a random person at a party and find something to talk about that you were both genuinely interested in, and to gauge instinctively whether they would find your bluntness offensive or your candour delightful. On the other, nobody _noticed_ anything, at least not anything important. They paid close and careful attention to pointless minutiae like what Kim Kardashian was wearing that day, but glazed over at, for example, the merest reference to the slow majestic dances of vapour and temperature differentials across the thin fragile envelope of the Earth's atmosphere. At times he could almost weep with frustration. There was a whole wide world out there, filled with amazing things that were right there, readily graspable and uncompromising without being made up or fudged or nitpicked, and the understanding of which brought him joy and a measure of peace; and when he tried to share any of it, people would roll their eyes and return to Instagramming their lunches. 

This regrettable mass inattention to detail was probably, he reflected, why Tomte Nissen was rifling around in his living room with such aplomb.

"I can see you, you know," he said finally, putting down his iPad.

"I know," said Tomte, hoisting a navel orange into the toe of Mads' stocking. It was big enough that he had to lift with his legs, and the cords in his short neck stood out. "You tell me every year." 

This was news to Vegard. "But you don't exist," he said.

"You tell me _that_ every year, too." Tomte tumbled an orange into Emma's stocking. 

"Listen," Vegard said, getting up from the couch, "do you need help?"

"As always," Tomte said, "I would be most grateful."

Vegard helped him distribute the candies, the small toys, three more oranges, and a tiny wrapped gift for Helene. Afterwards, the two of them sat drinking milk and eating cake and the buttered porridge that the children had put out, and something about the mingled smells of cake and porridge and evergreen made him realize that yes, he had done this before. "Why do I never remember?" he asked, and he was surprised to hear a catch in his voice.

Tomte got up from where he sat on the table next to the cake plate, walked over to Vegard on his small legs, and patted his arm. "There, there, my dear. I think that's to keep you safe."

"Safe? From what?"

"If you don't know what's going on, my dear, best that I not tell you."

"Do you say _that_ to me every year, too?"

Tomte stopped patting, and eyed him speculatively. "No, and that’s passing strange. This is the first year that you’ve asked why. And it has me wondering if it’s sheer coincidence that it’s been the worst year yet."

"What do you mean the worst year yet? We’ve been having a pretty good year. Not just our family, but...Norway, I thought. The economy is solid. We just collected a record number of UNICEF sponsors, and the UN still says we’re the best country in the world." He had a sudden, guilty thought. "Are things really going to hell in the rest of the world? More than usual?"

Tomte looked grave. "I forget, you don't have access to the same channels. Let us just say, then, that there are a lot of very frightened people here, Vegard, and they are making a lot of bad decisions."

"Oh," Vegard said. "They do that, you know."

"They do," Tomte agreed. 

Vegard took a swallow of milk. "Is there anything...any way I can help? Maybe with my brother?"

"Dear boy," Tomte said, meditatively. "You always wanted to help. And you did, in your own way."

"I did?"

"Twice, really. Three times, if you count the little girl."

"Of course I count the little girl!" Surprised by the harshness of his tone, Vegard investigated his memory, and found...nothing.

"Four times, if you count testifying."

"I testified? About what? I don’t remember anything."

"No," Tomte said. He shook himself, abruptly. "And it’s probably just as well. Get you to bed. Let no one say that Tomte Nissen tipped his hand. If there’s anything you can do, that can’t be done better by someone else, I’m sure someone will be in touch."

"All right, but..."

"To bed, Vegard!"

"All right, all right." Vegard finished his milk and put his glass in the dishwasher; Tomte’s could sit out, as proof to the children that he’d been there.

He went upstairs, but not to bed. The guest bedroom had a television in it, and this he turned on, on the lowest volume he could still hear, and flipped through the channels, looking for signs of strife. Children's choir, _Lindmo_ rebroadcast, _Big Brother_ , shopping, cooking, _The Walking Dead_ , treadmill infomercial, Tomte, grownups' choir, oooh elephants...

Tomte?

He flipped back. The nissen on the screen said, " _Bed_ , Vegard."

"All right," he said meekly.

***

_March, 2016_

After the March special, Magnus Devold would realize that things had been weird all that day. 

The weeks before had been fine. It had been good to be back. He was glad he'd cleared his shooting schedule for this. But then Heidi had phoned in first thing the morning of the show, saying she'd awakened covered in indigo spots and while she felt fine her husband was taking her straight to the hospital. Equipment kept failing, everything from the audio monitors to the coffee maker, and the cameras kept recording interference. He had no idea what the replacement props girl was wearing, but he heard the camera crew talking, and apparently every time she passed in front of the camera she'd cause a lens flare. Bård's and Vegard's suits had gone missing, necessitating a panicked phone call, a last-minute Tiger run, and some frantic alterations. And the last straw really should have been the pair of eyes he saw peeking out from under the lid of the teapot in the kitchenette. At the time he put it down to spring in the air, although he did briefly consider that _Tonight With Ylvis_ had always been this weird and he'd just been too green to notice. Maybe this was what Vegard meant about people not paying attention. But Vegard hadn't been paying any attention either. He'd been looking straight at the teapot, but he had this funny glazed look on his face, and that had somehow made Magnus able to shrug it off as pollen or changes in the air pressure, or perhaps just a new perspective on things that had been there all along. Maybe having a show of your own made you able to truly see the chaos behind the scenes and the sprites in other people’s teapots.

And then Bård had come in and Vegard had startled, almost guiltily, and when Magnus looked again the lid of the teapot was closed.

"So the camera crew says tonight we’re going for a sort of J.J. Abrams feel," Bård said, draping himself over one of the couches. After a bit of charity shearing the year before last his hair was nearly back to its original length, and he seemed to take great pleasure in being able to flip it around again. 

"It’s just something the props girl is wearing," Magnus said. "As long as she stays away from the cameras during filming, everything should be fine."

"That reminds me," said Vegard, "I’ve got to see her about something." He checked his phone. "After we see Thea, I guess. Let’s go."

He and Bård levered themselves up from their respective couches with twin groans. "I am going to be so happy to fall into my own bed tonight," Bård said plaintively, rubbing his neck. 

On the way out, Vegard lifted the lid of the teapot and peered inside. "What are you looking for?" Magnus asked him.

"Hm?" Vegard dropped the lid. "What was that?"

"Just wondered about the teapot, that’s all."

"What about the teapot?" Vegard said, with honest bewilderment on his face. "Oh...ask me later. We’ve gotta go."

Magnus never did end up asking him. Over the ensuing weeks, he wondered if asking would have made any difference.

***

The woman they'd brought in to replace Heidi strode purposefully down the corridor, trying to look like she knew what she was doing. She might have exaggerated her showbiz credentials a little to get this gig, although she had downplayed others, and politics was surely a kind of showbiz, with, she reminded herself, much higher stakes. She had no illusions about her ability to fit herself seamlessly into a seasoned, well oiled operation from start to finish, but today it would be a matter of swooping in and completing someone else's work. She was good on her feet, and not afraid to ask questions--and, although she hated taking advantage of it, new and young and pretty enough that if those questions marked her as anything less than an experienced professional, she could get away with it for one night. She could handle this. 

The brothers hadn't said anything yet. She'd seen both of them briefly, and Bård had spoken to her as part of a group of backstage people, but there had been no recognition in his eyes. Probably she looked very different in her corduroys and sweater, her gold-red hair done up in a bun at the nape of her neck. And it had been nine years, for goodness' sake. 

The corners of Bård’s eyes crinkled now when he smiled, and his dark blond hair was shorter, but the warm mischief of his smile and his easy, lanky grace had not changed in the slightest. The big change was in Vegard. That Hallowe'en when she’d said goodbye to the brothers at Bymarka, Vegard had been bundled in a sweater and a hoodie and a Colorado Elks coat, with a knit cap jammed over shoulder-length curls that defied all his efforts to tame them. He’d been all tucked into himself, bouncy and adorkable with a sweet guileless smile. 

This Vegard was relaxed, polished, practiced. His hair was a bit shorter now, just touching his collar, but the curls had been given free reign, and the way that one tumbled over his forehead just so was surely deliberate. He was still not a tall man, but his wardrobe choices these days made him look less compact--although she watched him move, and he still had plenty of bounce. 

Now, after the last choreography rehearsal, he had summoned her to his dressing room, and by the brilliance of his smile when he'd asked, she thought this would be the moment he would say that of course he knew it was her, that maybe he'd only suspected at first and something had confirmed it, or maybe they'd both known all along and just being messing with her, and what brought her to Oslo? 

When she knocked on the door, he opened it, and motioned her in with one hand, towelling the sweat out of his hair with the other. "Mel, come in. I don't know if this is fair to spring on you, seeing as it's your first day, but I had an idea last night. You know the toy car bit? I think what would be even funnier is if--hang on, I’ve got a picture of it on my phone. You see? Can we rig up something like that, with the fly swatter and the escargot?"

"I think so," she said. They'd have to run out and buy escargot, though, unless there was some in the kitchenette. "What about meatballs? They're a more comfortable shape, and they won't get garlic butter all over people's clothing."

"Yeah. Yeah, meatballs would work too." He swiped the screen, handed the phone to her, and moved out of her line of sight momentarily. "And while you’re looking, here’s a picture of the Horsehead Nebula. I didn’t take this one myself, though." He laughed. "My arms would have to be five hundred and fifty-nine thousand metres long. This is from the Hubble Telescope. The Horsehead Nebula--"

"You’re wearing jeans," she said in amazement. 

He raised an eyebrow at her. "It’s okay; it’s a casual nebula."

"I mean, you were wearing jogging pants a second ago. And your shirt had a little red logo on it."

"I changed. I was all sweaty. Sorry. Do you get embarrassed with that sort of thing? I never even think of it anymore; I’ve been in my underwear on national television so many times that instead of tags they have little Norway Heritage plaques. You should probably get used to it if you can. Sorry. There will be people doing quick changes all around you."

"No, no, that's fine," she said, trying not to blush. "I just...you'd think I would notice. And I didn't."

He waved that off, smiling. "It's quite all right. Nobody notices anything." With a gentle chuckle, he added, "Except for me, of course."

"Do you?" _Like your old friend, Vegard?_

He grinned, and said, "I know, I know--plenty to do, joining the project at the worst possible moment, no time for nebulae. Fly and be free, then. You'll do just fine."

***

And she did. Everyone did.

***

Bård was changing when he recognized Vegard's knock. "You headed home?" Bård called through the door. 

"To the office," Vegard said. "It shouldn't take long, but I want to get those vocals tweaked, and I don't want to have to go in tomorrow, and I sure don't want it hanging over my head all weekend."

Bård shook his head, but he couldn't pretend he didn't understand. "All right. I'm just going to go straight home. See you Monday."

"Yeah."

He chilled for a little while in the dressing room, just decompressing, checking VK and nibbling on a protein bar. Finally, he closed his laptop, put on his hoodie, and walked out, greeting and thanking the crew members that he encountered in the corridors. 

It had rained, and the night was cool. The sounds of traffic were muted and oddly soothing. He put his hood up, and started to walk. 

He thought nothing of the small group of people at the corner of the building until a female voice called, "Bård, can we take a picture?"

"Sure," he said, trying hard to sound cheerful, rather than long-suffering. 

The young woman in question, an exquisitely beautiful redhead with alabaster skin, said, "You don't remember me at all, do you?"

He looked hard at her. "You do look a little...I'm sorry, refresh my memory?"

"Jess. We met in Trondheim, while you were filming _Norway's Most Wonderful_."

"Oh, now, that was a _long_ time ago."

She grinned. "It's really okay. Here," she said, and handed him, of all things, a tiara, with an iridescent stone set in it. "The Circlet of Sælu. For old times’ sake. We’ll make sure you’re all right."

The name rang a bell, although not a very loud one. He raised an eyebrow at her, but nevertheless put it on.

And shouted out, his knees giving way, at the moment the stone made contact with his skin. The group caught him as he fell, and drowned out his cries with artificially raucous laughter, and carried him away.

###### Suggested musical pairing: Renaissance's "Can You Hear Me" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-q2e1A_Rg4


	2. Elf-Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Counterintuitive Survival Strategies #1: the strategic placement of office supplies / Ylvis: A Remix/ 43/ Faerie tale

Vegard was in his office, playing with the levels on the second backing vocal track for the new song, when it hit--blazing from the back of his skull to the middle of his ribcage, a wave of pleasure so intense that it forced a strangled scream from him. He pitched forward, clutching the front of the desk. "No no no no no no no," he said over and over, more because it was what he said when he was discomposed than out of genuine protest. He supposed that the sudden onset of any feeling this powerful was some sort of emergency, but what was he supposed to tell 113? _Hi, my name is Vegard Ylvisåker, and I feel alarmingly good right now._

As he struggled to ride it out, he became aware that what he was chanting had changed. He was gasping out "sæ" with each breath, and "lu" as he sucked in the next one. "Sælu, Sælu, Sælu, Sælu..." Nonsense syllables, except...were they?

He needed to _think_ , but his central nervous system was partying far too loudly. He brought his forehead down on the desk in frustration, and was rewarded by a brief moment of clarity.

Pain. Right. For some reason, it was more of a reminder than a discovery, but he would take what he could get. After a wild look through his desk drawer, he snatched up a large binder clip, but the feeling had left him weak and clumsy, and the clip skittered out of his fingers and onto the floor. Pinching the pressure point in the webbing of his thumb as a stopgap, he dropped to his knees and hunted around the floor until he found the clip, and affixed it to his pinkie finger. That was a little better. Or rather, worse in a way that improved things. He propped himself up against his desk, and tried to sort things out. Sælu?

He wracked his memory, and found nothing, but the sudden light shining under his door, and the knock, surprised him not at all. "Come in," he called hoarsely, his breath still coming in great shudders. "Mel. Melantha." He was aware of what he must look like, pooled bonelessly at the foot of his desk, shoulders hunched, mouth hanging open, patches of sweat blooming on his white t-shirt. Some part of him clearly not hooked up to his forebrain said, "I thought you were going to ask me the next time you did this."

She went to him and knelt, looking stricken. "But we didn't do it to you; we did it to your brother. Of his own free will. I was very adamant about that."

"Then why do I...why am I...?" He tried to pinpoint where exactly the pleasure was coming from, to follow it to its source, and found...Bård! Really, honestly Bård, lit up like a little sun in the back of his mind. "We’re connected," he said wonderingly. "All those times people called us telepathic..."

She eased him down so that his head was on her lap. "You were back then, too. Don’t you remember? My father used the Kvølstafur on Bård, and you felt it and fought back with...this. The Circlet of Sælu."

He shook his head, somewhat convulsively. "I have never felt anything like this in my life."

"I don’t think it affected you quite as much as it affects him. You kept trying to pull it off, even in your sleep. Everyone I talked to afterward said you shouldn’t have been able to do that. You really don’t remember?"

"A fight," he murmured. "But not a fight. I was just lying there. A grove of linden trees. With a lamp and a couch in it."

"You do remember!"

"Pieces. It’s like they’re scattered in different places." He thought, suddenly, of a night four years ago, the smell of chlorine, the lingering taste of hot chocolate, the feel of shrink-wrapped plastic, Bård’s sudden incredulous shout. "Not all of them are wired up to my conscious mind."

"It’ll all come back," she soothed. "I didn’t realize. You seemed to have so much control last time." She frowned at the binder clip on his pinkie, and pulled it off. Vegard drew in a shaky gasp. His shoulders arched and he tossed his head from side to side, and then subsided, chest heaving. "You’re safe," she told him, running her fingers through his curls. "I see now what you meant back then, though, when you told me that the circlet was a weapon."

"Yes," Vegard said, in a small, foggy voice. Something else was bothering him, and he clutched at the pressure point on his thumb until he remembered, and could form the words to ask. "Why, Melantha? Why Bård, why now?"

"We need your help, both of you," she said. "And Jessalyn has been keen to use the Stone of Sælu on Bård since...well, forever, and I had access to it through the university."

"Yeah?" Vegard said. His curiosity satisfied and the worst of his worry eased, he gave himself over to the feeling, letting his hands slacken and his consciousness melt and run like wax. His eyes rolled back in his skull. "We’re gonna be _really_ helpful."

***

It was midnight when Helene heard the door open. Vegard was back a little earlier than she'd expected. "My darling," he said as he came in, extending both hands to greet her.

Helene's eyes widened, and then narrowed, and she placed her hands on her hips and stood there with cold fury on her face. 

"Whatever is the matter?" He tried to kiss her, but she shoved him away. 

"Get away from me. Who are you?"

"Your loving husband, home from a night’s work and very hurt that you won’t kiss him?"

"Nice try. I'll ask you one more time, who are you?"

He advanced again, arms held out for an embrace. "Now dearest, I don’t know what would make you say such a--ow!" She had taken a swipe at him, and her nails had left a long scratch down his forearm. He backed into the corner behind the door, dark eyes suddenly wide and frightened.

"Down," she said, frostily, and he sat, forearms crossed over his head. She loomed over him until he looked up at her. 

"Whoever you are," she said, "do you _really_ think I wouldn’t know my own husband from an impostor? His tone, his posture, his facial expressions? His smell, for god’s sake--do you think I don’t know how my own husband _smells_?" She made a face. "His blood? I don’t know it as well as the rest of him, thank goodness, but I distinctly remember it being red."

Not-Vegard kept one hand on his head, and brought the other down slowly and carefully, bending his elbow until he could get a look at the transparent amber fluid welling up in the scratch. He met her eyes guiltily, and slowly his chin tucked in and the scraped arm crept across his chest until he could grasp his opposite shoulder, so that he sat on the floor, a huddled ball of misery.

"I’m sorry," he said. "I...I..."

"Oslo dialect, too," she said, disgusted. " _Honestly_." Her eyes suddenly widened in horror. "Is he alive?"

"What?"

"Is Vegard, _real_ Vegard, _my_ Vegard, alive?" She grabbed the doorstop, a heavy cast-iron thing, and brandished it over him. "Is he?"

Not-Vegard tried to make himself even smaller. "He should be. He should be just fine."

"Where is he?"

"Don’t know. I’m sorry!" he yelped as she made a move with the doorstop. "I really don’t know. Nobody was going to hurt him. They need his help."

"They who? _They who_?"

"The Underjordiske."

Never taking her eyes off him, Helene lowered the doorstop to the ground, well out of his reach, and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Between digits, she glanced down at him to make sure he was staying put. "Maria?" she said.

"Helene! I’m so glad you called! Listen...um....how’s Vegard?"

"He’s not himself right now," Helene said, staring hard into Not-Vegard’s dark eyes. "How’s Bård?"

Maria let out a wavery little laugh. "Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? He’s...well...he’s been telling me, at great length, about timbre."

***

An hour later, a reasonable if imperfect approximation of the two oldest Ylvisåker brothers sat at Helene’s kitchen table, with their legs duct-taped to the legs of the chairs, and their hands duct-taped together in front of them. Not-Bård had brought his bound hands up and was rubbing his upper lip so hard that it had gotten red.

"There it is!" Helene said triumphantly. "If you’d done that when I started to shout at you," she told Not-Vegard, "you might have been able to bluff your way through for, oh, another thirty seconds or so. Possibly a whole minute."

A soft noise from upstairs made them all fall silent and look up. After the call from Helene, Maria and Bård’s kids had been roused from a sound sleep, shepherded yawning into the car, and then put to bed in the spare room, and for a moment the women thought it might be one of them; however, it was Emma, Helene and Vegard's eldest, who appeared on the stairs. 

"Go back to bed, honey," Helene said gently.

The girl rubbed her eyes, squinched up her face, and then padded the rest of the way downstairs. As Helene and Maria looked at each other in consternation--caught between wanting to warn her off the man who only looked like her father and not wanting to terrify her--Emma crawled up on Not-Vegard’s lap. He cast a questioning glance at the women, but the tenderness and reverence on his face when he looked at Emma forestalled intervention. He lifted his bound wrists to let her up, and ruffled her hair a little before lowering them again so that his arms encircled her. She nestled her curly head into the crook of his neck. "When’s my papa coming home?" she asked him.

"It will be a few days," he told her, his voice very gentle. "He has a job to do, and then he’ll be back."

"Is it important?"

"Not more important than you, sweetling. But it matters a lot, to a lot of people, and he and your Uncle Bård are the only ones who can do it. You should be asleep now, though. Do you want us to sing you a lullaby?"

She nodded, and drew her legs up under her so that she was curled up. 

Not-Vegard started to sing, a soft, eerie, beautiful melody that was in no language Helene recognized. In that moment, lost in the music, he looked closer to the real Vegard than he had so far, his eyes wide and sad and depthless. Not-Bård joined in, adding a high sweet descant in words of the same language. When the last notes died out, Emma was fast asleep, her lips curled up in a tiny smile. She did not rouse as Helene took her gently from Not-Vegard’s arms, carried her upstairs, and put her to bed.

When Helene came back down, Maria looked sad and tired and perplexed, Not-Bård looked resolutely at the kitchen table, and Not-Vegard had a small, content smile on his face. Helene sat down next to him, and the smile faded. "I don’t know whether to thank you or punch you," she said through her teeth.

Irritation flickered across his features. "Punch me, if you like," he said. "I’m not such a monster that basic decency to a child should require thanks."

She balled up a fist, but it stayed at her side. "What are you, then?"

It was Not-Bård who answered. "Standard low-tech AI. Think sophisticated golems, animated by a Class Forty-Three infusion spell."

"Class Forty-Three?"

"A specific mix of DNA, reflective constitution, compulsion, implanted knowledge, and actual personhood," Not-Bård explained. "I think the percentages are seventeen/twenty-six/four/twenty-three/thirty, but I’d have to verify. Classes One through Fourteen are--"

"They mixed something up," Maria broke in, sounding brittle and exasperated. 

"It’s an imperfect science, and there was a lot of time pressure," Not-Vegard said. "We were infused just before the crackdown on lab work."

"I thought the Underjordiske were fairies, not scientists," Helene said.

"It’s a common misconception among humans," Not-Bård said. "Anyone can do science; some of us just have more forces of nature to work with than others. It might have been a DNA mixup. That gets used in two stages, once for the physical form and once for behaviour patterning. They might have mixed up the samples between stages, or Vegard might have accidentally taken a sip from the glass they got Bård’s DNA from. Or it might have been a simple transposition in the tandem patterning at the compiling stage. The patterns are complex and there was no time to double-check."

Not-Vegard asked, "How do you know about the Underjordiske?"

"The wonders of Google autocomplete, combined with some choice observations about my husband’s behaviour in 2007. I don’t know what happened to his memory, but mine is just fine."

"I’ve never actually met Vegard," Not-Vegard said, "but I’m beginning to realize that he’s a very lucky man."

Maria's head snapped up. "If you had managed to convince us, how far were you going to let this go?"

Not-Bård looked aghast, and then hurt. "Didn't he just tell you we're not monsters?"

"I've been rehearsing my little reveal speech for hours," Not-Vegard sighed.

There was a long silence. And then, Helene said, "So...what are we going to do about this? About you two? Because whoever you are, you seem like really nice Class Forty-Three golems, but you are not our husbands."

"Not even close," Maria added. "I don’t know the Underjordiske, but I’m insulted that they’d think we’d be fooled for even a minute."

"I don’t know what the reasoning was either," Not-Vegard admitted. 

"But the four percent compulsion was for you," Not-Bård put in.

"For us?"

The not-brothers exchanged a look of apprehension, and then Not-Bård said to Maria, "If you tell me to return to your house with you and do whatever tasks you set for me and watch over the children, I will do that. If you tell me to go away, I will do that too. If you tell me to throw myself off the top of Oslo Plaza..." He swallowed, hard. "I will do that, too."

"That goes for both of us," Not-Vegard added.

"You need names," Maria said, abruptly.

"That’s a good sign," Not-Bård said. "You wouldn’t name us just to tell us to kill ourselves, would you?"

"No," Helene agreed. She turned to Not-Vegard. "Do you have anything you want to be called?" When he answered with a glum shake of his head, she said, "Well, really, you’re easy."

"Easy?" he echoed. 

She laughed. "Your name is Finn. Finn Weber."

"Finn," he said. "All right."

Maria eyed Not-Bård. "Oh, I don’t know. I guess you’re Brynjar Kvam, aren’t you?"

"Okay."

"Finn," Helene said, "Brynjar--are we in danger?"

The changelings looked at each other. "Doubtful," Brynjar said, finally. "The problem as we’re aware of it doesn’t extend to the human sphere, and our implanted knowledge doesn't include anything beyond the most basic defence, so no danger was anticipated."

"I've got a little extra, to mimic a military background," Finn said, "but I think we're mainly for appearance's sake."

"Finn," Helene said, "I want you to find Vegard. Keep him safe. Bård too, if they're together. Help them get this thing over with, and bring them back to us in one piece."

Brynjar made a face. "Are you sure you want him to do that? They're in two pieces right now."

"It's really okay," Finn told him. "I know what she meant."

"Bring each of them back in one piece," Maria clarified. "Brynjar, go with Finn. Maybe check in once in awhile, if you can do it safely, and let us know how they're doing. Rescue them if they need it, or go out and help them do whatever it is that needs to be done."

***

Bård awoke in a strange room, dazzled by sunlight streaming through a window. He threw an arm over his eyes, and groaned out of force of habit before realizing that he actually felt quite good. The groan turned into more of a purr as he stretched, and yawned, and had a good look all around, trying to place his surroundings. 

The room was a large walnut-panelled mansard with two sleigh beds, a rolltop desk, and a wardrobe. Vegard was on the other bed, wearing cutoff blue jeans and a red t-shirt that was two sizes too big for him, and trying to shield the screen of his phone from the glare. He laid the phone aside, and met Bård’s eyes. "How do you feel?"

Bård thought about it. "What if I told you that I have the world’s most delicious hangover?"

"I would want to establish criteria and devise tests," Vegard said, "to determine which of us has the _most_ delicious hangover. Also, partly to assure myself that I still can, and that last night didn’t burn anything out."

"You too?"

Vegard didn’t answer him. Instead he met Bård’s eyes, and together they sang, " _Seven three five one two fourrrrr nine five zero six eight, eleven four thirteen sevennnnnn._ "

"All right," Vegard said, "what can you deduce from that?"

"That I'm a top-notch improv artist, and you're a big nerd. Nothing we didn’t already know."

"I just sang a string of fifteen random numbers, Bård. You matched me word for word, note for note, with no delay."

"That’s our job," Bård said. "What are you trying to say, Vegard?"

: _That we really are a little bit telepathic._ :

"What? Seriously? That's completely absurd. Where’s this coming from?" Bård swung his legs over the size of the bed, and briefly wished that yesterday morning he’d opted for something a little tamer than the neon green boxer briefs. "This isn’t like you at all; what happened to establishing criteria and devising...tests?" He looked at Vegard’s face, at his impish knowing smile, and trailed off. "You didn’t say that out loud, did you?"

"Nope."

"How--" Bård bit back the question, and instead closed his eyes. : _How long have we been able to do that?_ :

"We were apparently aware of it and using it in 2007."

"And how long have you known about it?"

Vegard grimaced. "I didn’t really understand what was happening until Melantha found me and scraped me off the hardwood and explained, but you might say I was suddenly and forcibly reminded of it last night. Right about the time you put on the Circlet of Sælu, which left me trying to edit audio from the upper stratosphere."

"Ah." Bård massaged his temples. "Sorry about that."

Vegard shrugged. "You didn't know. Neither of us knew."

"Melantha. And the one who got me was...Jess." Bård looked up sharply. "Mel the new props girl?"

"We knew we knew her from somewhere. Apparently we've done all of this before."

"In 2007," Bård said.

"In 2007."

"Did we know them well enough back then to trust them to undress us and put us to bed?"

"I kept an eye on them," Vegard assured him. "Melantha kept right away from the department, and I wouldn’t have let Jess interfere with you either."

Bård laughed in disbelief. "What, you could pay attention?"

"If you dig your thumb into a pressure point, it’s easier to concentrate. The brain has a sort of bandwidth maximum, right? So if it’s maxed out with one thing occupying your attention, you distract it with something else and it weakens the signal. It’s the reason music works as a painkiller and increases your stamina during exercise."

Bård grabbed his phone and texted Maria that he was all right, and had been unavoidably detained. When he got her reply, he looked up at Vegard, interrupting him in the middle of something about oxytocin production. "You told her where we were?"

"As far as I could. Somewhere in Ekeberg. I think the girls got a message to Maria and Helene last night. Helene didn't seem too happy with me when I got in touch with her this morning, but someone had already let her know." Vegard motioned with his head to a door in the wall. "Bathroom’s over there. They left us towels and a change of clothes."

Fifteen minutes later, Bård emerged from the bathroom damp and dressed in borrowed clothes that were too big for him, and followed the smell of coffee and the sounds of conversation down a flight of narrow wooden stairs to a second-floor apartment, and a kitchen table. Vegard sat drinking tea, while Mel the props girl and Jess the tiara-bearer doctored coffees. When they looked up at him and smiled, he knew them: Melantha and Jessalyn. Of course. 

"There's Bård," Melantha sang out.

"Do you remember us _now_?" Jessalyn asked sweetly. 

"Pieces," Bård frowned, taking a seat at the table. It was no IKEA table either, but a piece of solid, well maintained hardwood furniture. His brother and the girls were using coasters, and he took one as well as he helped himself to tea. 

"I remember boiling a lot of water," Vegard said, rubbing the side of his face. "And digging a hole."

"There was a hole," Bård agreed. "And that one really bizarre trip to the grocery store, remember?"

"Lime jello!" Vegard shouted jubilantly. This made the girls laugh, and he sat there for a moment with his nose scrunched up, perplexed at his own outburst. 

"I remember feeling really terrible," Bård said. "Were we, like, trapped somewhere?"

"No," Vegard said, rubbing his upper lip. To the girls he said, "This is boring, to do it like a quiz. Can't you just tell us?"

"Of course," Melantha said. "Sorry. We've noticed your recall is a little...off. We thought it might help if we let you dig it up yourselves. But the bottom line is, in October of 2007, our father noticed that two humans and an occasional film crew kept turning up in elven spaces, and listening to who he thought were all the wrong people. So when you arrived in Trondheim, he tried to use an interview to co-opt you by feeding you, Bård, some nonsense about a prophecy and a Chosen One."

"I was the Chosen One," Bård echoed, with a feeling of dawning horror.

"It never occurred to Daddy that you would train with him if you didn't believe him and agree with him. Well, he still doesn't understand how anyone _can_ disagree with him in good faith."

"There was a staff," Bård said in a small voice.

"The Kvølstafur," Jessalyn put in.

"It hurt." 

Vegard reached across the table and patted Bård's arm. Bård flashed him a small, grateful smile. 

"The Kvølstafur conducts pain in the same way that the Circlet of Sælu conducts pleasure," Melantha explained. "He hurt Bård, and tried to coerce the two of you into massacring unarmed svartalfar, so we all four of us pranked him. Spectacularly."

Bård had closed his eyes. "Plunged him into a pit of chocolate milk and liverwurst and lime jello. I remember that." The corners of his mouth turned up a little.

"And sriracha," Melantha added.

Vegard had also closed his eyes, and his brow was furrowed. "Linnael Aruviel," he enunciated, shifting his fingers momentarily to the side of his mouth. "Linnael Reizbar Doninha Aruviel."

The air around them seemed to suddenly go very still. "Sssh!" Melantha hissed, pressing two fingers to his lips. As his eyes flew open in shock, she whispered, "Take it back!" 

She lifted her fingers, and Vegard said, "I take it back." The air relaxed. 

Melantha's shoulders sagged. "Sorry about that. I know he deserves everything he gets, and maybe a little more, but he's still my father."

"I still don't understand anything," Vegard said. "What was I saying?"

"You said his true name," Jessalyn said. "Nothing would happen at this range, but...you have to be very careful about saying true names."

"Do you remember cursing him?" Melantha asked.

The brothers looked at each other. "We curse a lot," Bård said eventually. 

Vegard added, "It's hard to keep track."

"He was in Oslo for the Winter Solstice," Melantha told them. "And neither of us was there, but what we heard is that you, Vegard, caught him out in the middle of the very same kind of plot as before, and you turned him in. Your testimony--and what he did to you afterward--sent him to Innilokun Ríki, which is where we send criminals."

"What did he do to me afterward?"

"After you ruined his plan he cursed you, so you cursed him, so he magicked you into the middle of Hardangervidda."

Bård's eyes widened. " _That's_ what happened! Vegard could have died out there!"

"For a few weeks it was treated like murder," Melantha admitted. "Then someone brought in proof that you were alive and performing."

"I remember none of this," Vegard said glumly. "I remember waking up in boxer briefs at the foot of a standing stone, with Bård crying and yelling at me to put my socks on." He shook himself, and waved his hands suddenly. "And, and, hang on, though. I've been just going along and taking this in, because it does sound familiar, but back way up. I got magicked? Svartalfar? _Elven_ spaces?"

"Elven and Underjordiske," Melantha amended, looking abashed.

"Underjordiske sounds familiar too," Vegard said, "but _elven_. As in elves."

The sisters exchanged a troubled glance. "You can't see...?"

Hesitantly, with a look of bewilderment, Bård brought a hand up to touch the top of his own left ear. "I think..."

"It's easier to show you than to tell you." Jessalyn seized the hand, and guided it to her ear. It looked like a normal ear, but when his fingers touched it, even though he could see his fingers touching air just above it, he could feel... more ear. Carefully, gently, he explored, and found a point. "Oh wow," he said. 

Vegard was looking on curiously now. Melantha took his hand. "It's easier if you close your eyes," she said, and he did, and she lifted his fingers to one of her own ears.

Abruptly, Vegard's eyes snapped open, and he snatched his hand back. "I think I'm just going to go upstairs for a bit," he said, nearly knocking his chair over in his haste to get up. He made a beeline for the stairs, and a few seconds later, the upstairs door closed.

"Should someone go after him?" Melantha said, after a second.

Jessalyn was already starting to get up, but Bård put a hand on her arm, and shook his head a little. "He'll be all right. It's been a wild twenty-four hours. I think the ear thing finally tripped his breakers."

Melantha put her chin in her hands. "But...what happened to him? To both of you? How does a human go from being able to place a high-order curse to not seeing past a simple glamour? To not even believing in magic?"

Bård shook his head. "If we ever knew what happened, we forgot."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Thievery Corporation's "Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyYMhFPGYDY


	3. Thank You But No

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A magic railroad / The Faeries' Parliament / Making copies / Working at human / A heroic last stand against the dark

Bård gave his brother half an hour before walking up and knocking softly. "Vegard?"

The voice on the other side of the door sounded sad and washed out. "Yeah."

"Can I get you something to eat?"

"Yeah."

Bård walked down the stairs again, and back up ten minutes later with a mug of hot chocolate and a slice of toast spread thickly with Nugatti. He found Vegard on his bed, with his back pressed into the corner and a blanket around his shoulders. 

His brother ate and drank in silence. "Want me to fill you in now?" Bård offered. "Or do you need another little while?"

Vegard put his empty plate aside, and set the mug on the windowsill. "It’s humiliating, you know? It’s bad enough to find out that magic exists after you’ve spent your entire life making fun of it, but okay, we didn’t know, so we can be forgiven, right? Except that we did know. In 2007 I knew enough to use it. And then we stopped knowing, and I went right back to making fun."

"We’re the sum of our experiences," Bård said. "I think that’s allowed and rational; it’s just not very usual to lose experiences."

Vegard nodded, but he was staring straight ahead, running his fingers over his chest. "I can't, I can't, I can't do this." 

"You can," Bård said. "You did it nine years ago. We both did it, back before we had any idea what we could do, and we did it well enough that now they want us back."

"Doesn't that strike you as strange, Bård? That magical elves somehow need the help of a couple of revyboys?"

"We have things they don't," Bård pointed out. "Namely, a show, and access to an audience. And they want us to tell humans what's going on."

"What's going on?" 

Bård sat down on his own bed. "One of the _other_ things that happened in 2007, that we stumbled right into the middle of, was the passage of some kind of civil rights act that made the, let me get this right, the lios alfar and the svartalfar and the Underjordiske legally equal." 

"Bright elves, dark elves, and...the other hidden people. Got it."

"And since then, apparently, there's been a massive backlash from the lios alfar elite, and they are doing everything they can to roll it back, to take the things that are legal now and make them _practically_ impossible. Like, everyone has the right to vote, but according to a new rule everyone in the family has to be vouched for by a grandparent, and one person can only vouch for three people per registration visit. Which means if you’re a first-generation immigrant or old or your grandparents died young or you’re adopted you’re screwed, and if you’ve got a big family you’ve got to keep granny going back again and again. And the ones with the biggest families are the svartalfar and a kind of Underjordiske called the hulderfolk."

"Hulderfolk," Vegard echoed wonderingly, running a hand down the side of his face. He rubbed the bridge of his nose thoughtfully, and Bård had a sudden image of his brother standing in a hotel room, bloody and bruised, which for reasons he couldn’t even guess at now he’d found hilarious at the time. 

"The sisters want us to do a television special, sort of like we do for UNICEF on the show, but instead of human children we’d be doing it for the svartalfar and the Underjordiske."

"What, like a fundraising thing?" Vegard said. 

"They weren’t clear on that. I gather it would be to raise awareness as much as anything. Like, here are these wonderful people all around you, and this is what they’re going through."

"Hm." Vegard rubbed absently at his chest, looking off to the side. After a little while he said, "I don’t like it."

Bård had already protested, downstairs, that while they would love to help, this sort of thing took time and personnel and studio space and writing and planning and rehearsals and months to put together. "Why not?"

But what Vegard said surprised him. "It’s not that I don’t trust people to try to do the right thing. But I don’t trust them to know what the right thing is."

"We apparently figured it out, though."

"Over months, Bård. And we’re smart guys." He started counting off reasons on his fingers. "Aruviel still tried to reel us in with a story about a prophecy and a Chosen One, and nearly killed me. Most of what we knew, we've forgotten except for snippets, and I don’t want to go forward without understanding. And the truth is probably really complicated, more complicated than anyone can say in a one-hour television show. Let alone still having time to be funny. Right?"

"Well, that settles it," Bård said. "I'll go downstairs and let them know."

Vegard disentangled himself from the blanket and grabbed his dishes. "I'll go with you. They should hear it from both of us."

But when they got downstairs, Melantha handed them freshly pressed shirts and their suits--Bård's black one and Vegard's brown one, the very same ones that had gone missing yesterday. "Good. Slip these on and let's get you on the way."

"On the way?" Bård said blankly. 

"We've got an appointment with Dr. Freidag in half an hour."

Vegard took his clothes and went back upstairs; Bård was able to change in the downstairs powder room. 

When he emerged, Jessalyn was wearing the jeans and sweater she'd had earlier, but Melantha was wearing what he could only guess was elven women's business casual, flowing pale blue pants, and a white silk shirt under an aquamarine jacket that was loose nearly everywhere but very tight below the elbow. "Very smart," Jessalyn said approvingly as she looked Bård over.

Vegard joined them a second later, doing up his right cuff as he descended the stairs, even though he would have been the first to insist on three points of contact for anyone else. And then Melantha shepherded the brothers down another flight of stairs.

They emerged onto a narrow and winding tree-lined street. "So how do we do this?" Bård asked. "Do we ride a dragon to this appointment of ours?"

Vegard shook his head. "Hogwarts Express." He pointed to the brick wall of the building next door. "We run at that as hard as we can to get to platform 9 3/4. You first; the lady and I will be right behind."

Melantha smirked at them, and waved them into the cab that had just pulled up.

They piled in, with Vegard in the middle, as he was the shortest. "Listen, Melantha," Bård said, "Vegard and I talked, and as much as we want to help, we agreed that this isn't a thing we feel comfortable just launching into." 

"No, we get that," Melantha said. "That's why we're going to meet Dr. Freidag. She might be able to smooth the way a bit."

Vegard leaned over to her and said, quietly, "I don't know the situation as well as I feel like I should, and that in itself is a problem, but I do know that you can't always predict what an audience is going to do with what you give them. You can guess and hope, but if you are relying on them to react a certain way, it's better to pick something utterly non-controversial."

Melantha frowned. "You think that civil rights are controversial?"

"Depends," said the cabbie, making a turn. "When you frame it like that, of course not. But when you break it down to the specifics, some people get very nervous. If they weren't controversial, everyone would have them already and there would be no fuss."

They all clammed up then. Not that anyone disagreed; it just seemed better that way.

***

The cab let them out at a blocky brown brick building on the edge of Ekebergskråningen. The place looked abandoned and oddly shabby for this neighbourhood, but when the cab was out of view, Melantha took them to the papered-over main entrance. Something about the way her hand interfaced with the push bar on the door didn't look quite right, as if it wasn't making proper contact with the surface. Vegard suppressed a sudden wave of dread. "Brace yourselves," Melantha murmured. "I don't know how this will look."

Vegard shouted aloud, and beside him he heard Bård gasp, as the building's drab façade skewed, then doubled, then resettled into opulent white marble walls with gold accents. Melantha led them into a foyer done in the same white marble. A central pillar of granite had been carved to look like the trunk of an ash tree. The ceiling sported fan vaulting like branches and a fresco of leaves and fruits and animals; the floor was oak inlaid with ash wood to look like roots, gnawed at by walnut beasts with gemstone eyes. Behind a counter that appeared to be a solid, polished piece of rose quartz, a young and exquisitely beautiful blond man raised his eyebrows at them, but Melantha said, "We've got an appointment with Dr. Freidag," and he let them pass unchallenged.

They climbed a grand staircase to the second floor. The floors were lushly carpeted, the ceilings supported by exquisitely carved wooden beams. Melantha led them down a hallway. One of the heavy carved doors stood ajar, and a silver--real silver, he wouldn't doubt--nameplate proclaimed this to be the office of Dr. G. Freidag, Magister of Underjordiske Affairs. Melantha knocked at it before gently pushing it open. 

A small, round woman with olive skin, straight dark shoulder-length hair, and widely spaced eyes sat behind a desk. When she looked up, a word rose unbidden to Vegard’s lips. "Gisela!"

"My gods, Vegard! Bård!" There was real shock on her face. "Oh Melantha...this is your surprise?"

Melantha nodded. "It’s really okay, they’re okay," she said. "Jess and I met them nine years ago. They’re friends, and you can trust them absolutely. They helped bring my father to justice. And best of all, the humans will listen to them."

Gisela had gotten out of her chair. She greeted Bård with a two-handed handshake and a hug. Then she hugged Vegard and, to his surprise, gave him a kiss on the cheek. "I had no idea you knew each other. These boys need no introduction, believe me. I _am_ so happy to see you. Come on, let’s all..." She picked up the phone on her desk. "Liv, we’ll be in the Coral Room. Could you please bring us sweets and coffee?"

The meeting room she took them to, as opulent as any of the others they'd seen here, was designed to hold perhaps a dozen people, but they clustered at one end of a long, ornately carved table, in chairs that were more pleasant to look at than to sit in. "Vegard, Bård, how are you?" Gisela asked. "I've heard that you're doing extraordinarily well in the human world, but I haven't been able to keep up."

"Busy," Bård said, with a tired little laugh. He took a cookie and a couple of grapes. "But it's good. If it wasn't good, we wouldn't be doing it. And yourself?"

"Same. Although I find it much less good, these days. I never thought I'd say getting legal equality was the easy part, but gods help me, the law is easy to change, and systems and hearts and minds are _hard_." Her eyes roved to Vegard. "I cried, you know, when they said he'd murdered you. I was inconsolable. I almost took a day off work, but then I thought, no, that's what Linnael wants. You would want me to keep going."

"Yes, of course," Vegard said, nibbling at some almonds, and even with the holes in his memory, he knew this to be true. "They had it wrong. That was all down to Bård, though. He's the one who saved me."

She flashed a smile at Bård. Her canine teeth were pointed. "He does that, doesn't he?" 

Because she seemed to be operating off some kind of shared history she was assuming that Vegard remembered, he felt compelled to tell her. "I woke up in my underpants in the middle of Hardangervidda, with...no memory of any of this, honestly. Every so often something slips through, but I sound like I know more than I do."

Gisela's face got very still. "'Any of this' being...?"

He had trouble meeting her eyes. "Elves. Magic."

She covered one of his hands with both of her own, and looked about to cry. "Oh, Vegard."

"Both of us," Vegard said around his free hand, with a guilty look at Bård. 

She sighed. "So you haven't kept up with the news on this side of things."

"We know nothing," Bård said.

"And if I told you that Audhild Kristtorn died in a very suspicious fire that the dálki refused to investigate?" Her fingers had tightened on Vegard's hand.

"I'm very sorry," said Vegard. 

"Because she's dead, or because you don't remember her?"

"Both," Vegard said past a curious tightness in his chest, and then there was a rush of heat, and tears were streaming down his cheeks. Astonished, he took his hand back. Gisela reached over and put a kleenex in it, and moved her own hand to his shoulder.

"I'm very sorry for your loss," Bård said. "Both of you. Can I ask...?"

Vegard shook his head, dabbing at his eyes. He honestly didn't know.

"She and I went to school together," Gisela said, dry-eyed, her voice tight and hot. "She was brave and beautiful and fierce, and she kept me from giving up so many times, and I was proud and honoured to call her my friend." 

They sat, in silence, for a few seconds. Vegard could remember nothing about Audhild Kristtorn other than that he owed it to her to explore this grief, but...later. Privately. He discreetly blew his nose, put his arms around Gisela and gave her a squeeze and a couple of firm pats, and sat, concentrating on breathing in and out. 

Eventually, Gisela said, in a voice that shook only a little, "I do want to catch up. I want to ask you so many things, and there's a lot you'll need to know. But I have community groups coming by in fifteen minutes. Melantha?"

"I have a studio ready to go," Melantha said. "It sounds like there would be...more kinks to work out than I thought. There are some, ah, concerns. But they do want to help."

Gisela looked pained, and for the barest second, deeply exhausted. "I’m impressed that you pulled all this together on your own, Melantha, and Vegard and Bård, I am so grateful that you still want to help..."

Melantha’s face had fallen. "Then what’s the problem? I took care of everything Espen said, every single thing."

"You’ve done wonders," Gisela assured her, "but the main problem was never logistical to begin with, and I really should have said something when those were the only terms Espen framed it in. And I did not, for which I apologize, because you recognized those challenges and I underestimated you enough to think that would be enough to put you off. For which I also apologize. But the fundamental concern is that this just isn’t a problem that humans can wade into and fix."

"Maybe not just any humans," Melantha ventured, "but Ylvis..."

"I’m sorry, boys," Gisela said. Vegard thought that she was just assuming they were a lot more invested in this project than they actually were until she told Melantha, "They’re also the humans who saved me from the assassination attempt at Skygge at Midsummer."

Bård and Vegard exchanged wide-eyed looks. 

"Yup. Got between me and a bolt of elfshot."

"All the more reason--"

" _Elfshot_ , Melantha. They died in agony, and I had to turn around and beg two passes of the Silver Branch." To the brothers, she said, "That was Audhild, by the way. She saved your lives sight virtually unseen, and it cost her a lot to do it, and I never wanted you to find out. We took care of two humans, once, years ago, and it turned out to work rather well for us, but we don’t have the time or the resources to take care of you now. Not two, and certainly not a country full who well-meaningly blunder in wanting to fix everything."

Tears stood in Melantha’s eyes. Vegard commandeered the kleenex box from Gisela’s side of the table, and then slipped an arm around her shoulders. "Hey, though, hey, it’s lovely for our egos that you thought we could do this."

"So what do we do now?" she demanded bitterly, breath hitching. "Just take you home? Collect our changelings and slink away?"

Gisela looked horrified. "Changelings, too? Oh, you dear girl, I’m going to positively murder Espen. I mean, that’s a fantastic job, you thought of everything, but..."

"Changelings?" Bård echoed.

"If that's what it sounds like, Helene is going to flay me like a coffee table," Vegard said bleakly.

"The changelings are going to have to stay with you," Gisela said. "You’re going to need protection."

"I see how it is now," Bård said acidly. "You're bound and determined that no one is going to get out of this room without bursting into tears."

"The men who saved the SULA negotiator and put away Linnael Aruviel, visiting the Samkoma now? If you didn’t have a tail on the way here, rest assured that you’ve got one for the way back."

"But Aruviel is in jail," Vegard protested. 

"We’re not talking about a conspiracy of a few dozen unreconstructed elves, confined to the upper echelons of the Bright Court," Gisela said. "If it were, it would be easy. But this is a whole country in turmoil. There are lios alfar like Melantha and her sister who believe very strongly in equality, and svartalfar who think that the SULA Act was a mistake and if we just dressed better and had fewer children and took our earrings out, we could have gained rights incrementally with little upheaval. And every point of view in between. The problem is that the Bright Court still has de facto control over most of our institutions, and key people from it are panicking at what they perceive as a threat to everything they hold dear."

"It's very empathetic of you to say so," Vegard observed. 

"I don’t think I could be like that about the people who killed my best friend," Bård agreed. 

"Oh, I have my moments," Gisela said with a wry smile. "But I am a politician. One who has spent her entire career trying to convince the powers that be that I represent people, and not a snarling, biting horde of monsters. I can’t just flip the script; I know all too well where that leads. My point is, the people who still hold the reins of power are frightened and angry, and they have access to our decision-making bodies, our resource allocation bodies, our policing and security authorities, and our media. They can turn the tide of public opinion, and that's just what they've been doing. And they’ve learned a few tricks from humans after 9/11. Melantha, are the changelings programmed to act as bodyguards?"

"Not...not really," she stammered. "They were supposed to be replacements to keep the families off the radar, not protection if the families got onto the radar."

"Which they most certainly will be when we send the boys home to them. All right. Can you augment the changelings to _be _protection? Act as decoys, perhaps?"__

__"I’ll check with the programmer," Melantha said._ _

__"Find out," Gisela said gently. "Make it happen. Even though I realize that this didn’t turn out the way you wanted, Melantha, you've shown me that you are very good at making things happen. Vegard, Bård, right now, can you see through glamour?"_ _

__"No," Vegard said. "Not anymore."_ _

__"Do you remember what you were using when you met me?"_ _

__"No," Vegard said._ _

__"A cup!" Bård cried. "It was in a cup. Earlier that day, we...drank from a cup."_ _

__"Gold," Vegard said. He closed his eyes. "It was...sweet."_ _

__Gisela’s face had turned incredulous. "The King’s Mead?"_ _

__"Yes!" Bård shouted._ _

__"Solstice to Solstice," Vegard added wonderingly._ _

__"Bloody hell. All right, that's out. We’re going to have to find you something else, so you’re not sitting ducks."_ _

__"Why is it out?" Bård asked._ _

__"Because...do you remember where to get it?"_ _

__"No," Bård admitted. "But we might. We never know what we're going to remember, Vegard especially."_ _

__"You don't have that kind of time," Gisela said grimly._ _

__"Not to mention, it wears off, and I'm not going through that again," Vegard added. "If there's a whole other side to the world, I'm not going to keep turning my perception and my memory on and off like a, like a television set. It's not _fair_. To anyone."_ _

__Gisela pulled a notebook out of the front pocket of her lavender blazer, and scribbled something. "There's someone in Bergen who might be able to help you. I seem to recall that’s where you’re from, right?"_ _

__"We moved to Oslo a few years ago," Bård told her._ _

__"There’s no one closer," she said. "No one else at all, really. I’ll tell him to expect you. I’d recommend taking the train."_ _

__There was a knock at the door. "Dr. Freidag, the tunnel group is here," Liv’s voice said._ _

__"Righto." With a heavy sigh, Gisela got to her feet, snatching up a handful of grapes as she did so. Bård and Vegard got up as well, and then Melantha, red-eyed and subdued. "Boys," Gisela said, "I’m so glad to see you again, and so sorry...this didn’t pan out. Personally? It was worth it for the chance to reconnect. It’s so good to see that things are actually going well for someone."_ _

__"We appreciate you taking the time for us," Bård said, giving her another hug. "And it sounds like people will know how to get in touch with us, so if you think of something that a couple of humans can do for you, you know where to find us."_ _

__"Yeah," was all Vegard could think to say. Gisela hugged him, too, and held on a bit longer before stepping back._ _

__"Melantha," Gisela said gently, "I’m sorry this didn’t work out, but I am impressed, and I do want to work with you again. Go home, have a mad, and we’ll talk when you’re ready. Okay?"_ _

__Melantha nodded silently, and walked out, shoes making no sound on the lush carpeting. With little waves, the brothers turned and followed her outside._ _

____

***

They walked back to the flat, the brothers trotting along behind Melantha. She stopped once, on the side of a pretty birch-covered hill dotted with neat white houses, and they nearly ran into her. "Look, I'm sorry," she said, tears in her voice. "This is not your fault, and it's not hers. It's just...I just...I thought there was finally something I could do, and instead I just spent a tonne of money and wasted so many favours and kidnapped you from your homes and your lives and put you both in danger."

Vegard put a hand on her shoulder. "That's true," he said carefully, "but nobody's hurt. And...I'm a little glad, I think. Scared as hell, naturally, but if all of this has been a part of my life for nine years, I want to know about it."

"These changelings, though," Bård said, "what are they like? Are they convincing?"

Melantha sniffed, and tossed them both a feeble but grateful smile, and started walking again. "State-of-the-art DNA-infused copies, as exact as possible. My sister snuck in last week and swabbed your drinking glasses."

"That's all you need?" Bård demanded in disbelief.

"All we needed from _you_ ," Melantha said. "Don't worry, though. I don't think it's ever going to be widespread; it's prohibitively expensive and ridiculous amounts of work, and the Samkoma just banned the technology Theona used to do the infusion _and_ the personality matrices."

"How do you do those?" Vegard asked. 

"Well, it's Theona, and she's a science person, so she'll have the better explanation. But she had me give her footage of as many old performances and interviews as possible, and added some standard skill sets and background knowledge, plus they're supposed to develop in response to how people respond to them."

"On the one hand," said Bård, "although I understand and appreciate that you wanted to keep our families safe, I'm really not comfortable being cloned without my permission. On the other, I can think of times it would be useful to have another version of me kicking around." 

"Assuming it’s a faithful copy, and willing to do what you tell it," Vegard pointed out.

"We put a little compulsion in, mostly for your wives, but they have free will," Melantha said. "It would probably be a mistake to order them around."

"What if they don’t like us?" Vegard mused. Then he frowned. "What if they don’t like our wives?" He stopped short. "What if they _do_ like our wives? And our wives like them? What if they’re better husbands than we are?"

Bård laughed. "Our wives married _us_ , and they are not us. And there are no two women, not in the whole world, that I trust to set them straight more than Maria and Helene."

***

At that moment, Finn Weber and Brynjar Kvam had indeed been set straight. With one last, forlorn wave at Maria and Helene, they turned, and walked down the street.

They hadn’t been turned out of doors emptyhanded. Finn had a gym bag full of Vegard’s old clothes, Vegard's ancient cellphone, a first aid kit, a survival kit, and five thousand kroner. Maria had gone home and spent the morning putting together a similar package for Brynjar. They’d been treated to cots in the home studio, a sumptuous breakfast, a large lunch, and Helene had packed them each a substantial dinner. 

"That began very badly," Brynjar observed, "but it seemed to get better. Humans are very good at telling each other apart."

"There's a simple way to remember which of us is which," Finn offered. "My hair is dark and curly, and yours is golden and straighter. We'll get used to all this, and then the reflective constitution will make us more human and more _them_ , and we'll be able to tell everyone else apart too. They promised at the lab." 

"They _promised_ we'd be similar enough to fool their wives." Brynjar sighed. "We probably shouldn’t have avoided the fangirls last night, and let the reflective constitution mould us." 

Finn shook his head. "They would have wanted to talk about the special, which we weren't there for, and of course it’s not in the implants. Besides, it could be dangerous. They don’t really know who we're supposed to be; in a lot of ways Vegard and Bård are just pretty containers to pour themselves into."

"I used to be pretty as I was," Brynjar said. "Very tall, and very pretty."

"Doubtless. I had my moments of springtime exuberance, but mostly I had a job to do."

"Your kind has its own beauty," Brynjar said kindly. 

"They do too," Finn observed, motioning with his eyes to the rows of houses. "They're scary when they're afraid." His eyes turned wistful. "But very beautiful when they are...being..." He held up his hands and waggled his fingers, at a loss. Then he seemed to notice them. "Moving is weird," he said. "I mean, look at this. Look at this! I'm _moving_." 

"The question is," Brynjar said, "where to?"

"We could go back to the lab and see what they know," Finn said, without much conviction. "And get ourselves arrested. And them, too."

"I don’t think that sounds like a good idea," Brynjar said. "We knew they were going to do television, right? Let’s look up television studios." He pulled out Bård’s old cellphone, frowned at it, and put it away. "This is old technology. I’ve been implanted with a clear expectation that I should be able to search for television studios using a phone."

Finn mulled it over. "We need a computer," he said. "Let's go to the library."

***

"Just what I said," Kalindrael told the junior magister over the phone, pacing back and forth in the front office of the Magister of Education and Apprenticeships. "The Ylvis brothers have rejoined the fray. They just left the Samkoma with Aruviel’s wayward eldest. And now you know what happens. The svartalfar will enlist the humans, and the humans will come, and they will slaughter. It will be the Iron Wars all over again."

"Iron Wars? They have the atom bomb," Lirikael Vinael reminded him. "They could blast this planet into lifelessness." 

"Oh gods no," Kalindrael said softly. "We have to stop this. At any cost."

"We will," Vinael promised. " _I_ will. By Odin’s justice."

"I go with you, Chosen One. To death I go with you."

"Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. First off, make sure the brothers are apprehended."

"Can we do that?" Kalindrael said doubtfully.

"According to the Peaceful Haven Act, the Peace Division can detain anyone who makes them suspicious, and the last time the Ylvisåkers surfaced they did attack a Bright Court Lord. Second, find out where they plan to broadcast from, and do whatever you must to stop the show. But first and foremost get the brothers; they are wily and not easily turned aside." Vinael’s voice became haunted. "I still remember my first glimpse of the dark one, just outside the library at NUA. The darkness...the hate in his eyes. And when I was fighting for my life in that svartalfar pit, there he was, on the catwalk, staring down at me in smouldering triumph. I’m not so worried about the little brother; he’s just an easily led buffoon who idolizes his big brother. But the dark brother hates the lios alfar with a frightening passion."

"What happened?" Kalindrael asked. 

There was a shrug in Vinael’s voice. "He hates our beauty and our grace. He’s thrown his lot in with the svartalfar, and will do anything to see us forced out of the light. And his brother will help him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: The Cure's "Just Say Yes" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjJAUbHVE4g


	4. Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The message / Revenge / Quick change / The brave last moments of the Massive Cell Phone of Doom / Dead ends / Counterintuitive Survival Strategies #2: drunk-editing Wikipedia

The trio arrived back at the flat to find Jessalyn sitting at the table with a pot of tea. She’d changed into a hoodie and jogging pants. "Hi guys," she said brightly. "How’d it go?"

"Not well," Melantha said, in the same hot, tight sort of voice that Gisela had used to talk about Kristtorn. 

Jessalyn’s cheerful grin didn't fade; it collapsed. She made a strangled noise, and wrapped her arms around herself. She started to cry in great hitching sobs.

"Hey," Bård said softly, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"Don’t touch me!" she shrieked, and drove a fist into his crotch. As he dropped, she said, "Oh my gods Bård, I’m sorry."

There was a commotion after that, but he was too busy throwing up to pay attention. While he was curled up on the floor, someone pressed something cold into his hands, and he made sure it got to the right place. "Just breathe, just breathe," Vegard told him, squeezing his forearm. He was dimly aware of Vegard cleaning up around him, and then of hushed voices. 

After an eternity, the pain ebbed enough for him to uncurl. "That was well placed," he groaned. 

Vegard sat by him, cross-legged, fingers steepled in front of his face, his two index fingers running back and forth over his lips. He’d changed into yesterday’s black jeans and the red t-shirt, and a pale grey hoodie. "We have to go," he said. "I grabbed our stuff." He gestured with his chin at a cloth bag.

"What? What’s going on? It’s not because of me, is it?"

"No no no no no. Something happened. We’ll talk about it on the way out."

Bård put things together, and his stomach flipflopped again. "Someone hurt Jess. While we were gone." The look on Vegard’s face confirmed it. Bård got painfully to his feet, penguin-walked to the door they’d shown him this morning, and knocked.

"Come in," a choked voice said.

Jessalyn was sitting on her bed, twisting a kleenex in her hands. Her hoodie was off, and bruises had blossomed over one side of her face and all down her arm. Melantha had an arm around her, and had also been crying. "Bård, I’m so sorry," Jessalyn said. "I didn’t mean..." Her voice dissolved into tears again.

"Hey, hey," Bård said, limping forward a little but not touching her. "I’m all right, it’s okay, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about that. What about you?"

She was weeping in the crook of Melantha’s arm. "I’ll be okay. I just need to...to... I’ll be okay. I don’t want them to have the satisfaction."

"They called her a traitor," Melantha said, fiercely. "It wasn’t just random. They were sending a message."

"I just went out for milk, for _milk_ for gods’ sake, and when I got out of the store they were all around me."

"I still think we should call the dálki," Melantha said, with a look at Bård, and he understood he was supposed to back her up on this.

Bård thought of their father, though. The conversation this morning had shaken something loose, and he remembered Aruviel’s face as the elf-lord had loomed over him with the Kvølstafur, and the burning he’d felt. He knelt gingerly in front of Jessalyn on the polished walnut floor, and looked up into her face. "I think you get to decide what you want to do and what will make things better. Look...I don’t know if there’s anything time-sensitive you have to worry about, but if not, you don’t have to decide right away either, and even when you do decide, you’re allowed to change your mind. Whatever way you feel, it’s okay to feel that way. Except never let them tell you it’s your fault."

"I know," she said, not meeting his eyes.

"There were times for me when it helped to hear that from someone else, too."

"Thank you," she said. "I am going to tell Daddy."

"Not Mama?" Melantha said. 

"Not now. It’d just make her feel terrible, and she’d want to come here, and I don’t want to have to take care of her. And neither do you."

"Vegard and I have to go now," Bård said gently. "We’re going to Bergen."

Melantha nodded. "I’d hoped we could go with you, but..."

Bård shook his head decisively. "My brother and I can look after each other. You look after your sister."

"I’m sorry, Bård," Jessalyn sobbed.

"Don’t be. You two are plugged into this world, in a way that Vegard and I just aren’t. You can make a bigger difference from where you are than you can babysitting a couple of revyboys." He stood. "Is it okay if I give you a hug?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Thanks for asking."

He bent down and hugged her gently, careful of her bruises. Then he hugged Melantha, who took just a moment to bury her face in his shoulder. Then he blew a kiss into the darkened room, and backed out.

He changed in the downstairs powder room. When he emerged, Vegard was waiting at the door with the cloth bag and a package of frozen peas. They let themselves out, onto the quiet residential street.

***

"Let’s go through the woods," Vegard said. "If we do have a tail, it won’t be able to follow us--unless it’s a drone or someone on foot."

"Sounds good," Bård said. "Why do we have peas?"

"I didn’t want to put them back in the freezer after where we’d put them." He opened the bag and emptied them into someone’s compost bin at the side of the road. Then he took off down the winding, roughly paved street. 

Bård felt a vague uneasiness building somewhere behind his eyes. He looked for people watching or following. Once he did meet the gaze of an elderly woman planting bulbs in a front garden patch, and she gave him a nod, which he returned. He tried to breathe deep, to talk himself down, to let go of the weird, breathless, panicky, smouldering feeling in the back of his mind, but nothing would touch it. He tried to explore it, then, to put words to it, and found...Vegard. 

His brother, now a bit ahead of him, darted down a grassy, treed slope and across Kongsveien, and then he was on the steeper slope of Ekebergskråningen, without even looking to see if Bård was following. Bård ran, checking for traffic, and joined his brother under the cover of trees, running until they were abreast. Vegard had taken off his hoodie at some point, and was walking faster and faster, with longer and longer strides. He was breathing hard, his gaze straight ahead and intense, and now Bård realized that he'd felt this before, this thrum of tension. 

There was a sudden flare, and Bård looked over and saw that his brother wasn’t with him. Vegard had paused in front of a large mossy tree stump. He glared at it, paced around it, and then pulled back and gave the stump a mighty kick. He shifted his orientation a little, and kicked again. There was a noise like the crumpling of a cardboard box, and a chunk of rotten wood worked loose. Vegard struck down with his heel, pulverizing the stray chunk. He worked at the stump methodically, furiously, every so often letting out a growl through clenched teeth, until the stump was a punky, splintery heap at his feet. Then he lowered his head, red-faced and panting, and started to walk again, more slowly. 

"You’ve ruined your shoes," Bård said. The thrumming in the back of his mind had subsided somewhat, gone back to a slow burn.

"First World problems," Vegard growled back. "She’s Bjarte’s age." With a grunt, he kicked out at a rock and sent it clattering down the hill. 

"If we’ve got a tail, you’ve probably let them know exactly where we are."

"Good," Vegard said. He stopped, and clenched his fists by his sides, and shouted at the air, "Come and get me! Come and face me! Come on! Or do you only go after little girls?"

Bård thought about protesting that Jessalyn wasn’t a little girl anymore, and that according to what Gisela had pointed out any tail might not even be connected to her attackers, but neither of these seemed like things that would help. Instead, he darted back up the hill, and gave the remains of the stump a kick of his own. The only thing it did was hurt his foot, but it had been worth trying.

***

They were able to catch a bus at Sportsplassen, and boarded the Flytoget at Oslo Central Station. Less than an hour later, the train was pulling in at the airport.

Bård didn't know when the thrumming had stopped, but it was over now, and Vegard was looking moodily out the window, chin in one hand. He seemed to become aware of Bård watching him, and said, "We couldn't have stopped in at home, could we? It wouldn't have been safe, right? To give Helene and the kids a quick goodbye hug and pick up some stuff?"

Bård shook his head. "I don't know, I don't know. I haven't seen anyone."

Vegard shifted in his seat to face him. "How would we know if we did?"

"Good point. Let's just get to Bergen. We'll spend the night with Mum and Dad, go see this person Gisela wanted us to see, and fly home. Easy peasy."

"Easy peasy," Vegard echoed, without much conviction.

They bought tickets. On their way to security, someone shouted, "Bård! Vegard!" Bård's stomach flipflopped, but it was a couple of smartly dressed young women who had flown in from Poland especially for last night's show. It still amazed him that people would do that; he could think of a handful of acts he would do the same for, and the idea of being in that league felt...blasphemous. The brothers posed for a picture and signed autographs, and the two parties wished each other a pleasant journey before parting. 

"Maybe we are being paranoid," Vegard sighed, after they'd been through security. "If anyone was following us, they would have been stopped, but I don’t see anything."

"If we were being followed, they might have turned back on their own before security," Bård pointed out. They found the line for boarding, and waited.

A couple of security officers approached. In a low voice, one of them said, "Mr. Ylvisåker and Mr. Ylvisåker, would you come with us, please?"

They trotted along behind the officers obediently. After several minutes had gone by with no explanation, Bård asked, "Can you tell us what this is about?" 

"A small security concern," said the one who hadn’t spoken yet. "If you’ll just step this way..."

They turned down an immaculate corridor, and now the officers’ hands were on their shoulders, not gripping yet but definitely guiding. Bård met Vegard’s eyes, and then shifted his gaze to the officers’ ears. 

Vegard’s brow furrowed. : _You’re kidding._ :

"Is it something to do with our checked baggage?" Bård pressed.

"Yes. Nothing you’re directly responsible for, I’m sure..."

The brothers locked eyes again. They hadn’t checked any baggage.

They took a turn, and then another one. The corridors grew narrower, a little less sleek. This was a part of the airport the public wasn’t supposed to see. Probably Vegard knew where they were, but Bård had no idea.

: _Bård, I have a plan. Get ready to run._ : Bård’s eyes widened in surprise, and he glanced at Vegard, who flashed him a little smile. 

They were coming to a junction in the corridor. "Oh. Oh, you just have a little..." Vegard reached up tentatively towards the security officer's blond head, just above his ear, as if to brush away a fly or a speck of something. He touched the air. : _EAR!_ : 

"Got it," he said cheerfully, as the officer turned, looking incensed, and then Vegard grabbed Bård's arm and pulled him down the left-hand turn. They turned left again, then right, and then ran through a kitchenette that had a door on the other side. There was no shouting--the elves wouldn’t want to do anything that might alert legitimate security--but Bård heard running footsteps pass them. Of course; they also wouldn’t be as familiar with the airport as Vegard was. Then right again, left into the men’s toilets, past some lockers, and then right again. 

They emerged in the commercial area of Gardermoen. There were a couple of blond security officers in the distance, so Bård tugged Vegard's arm, and they slipped into the Vinmonopolet, and milled around the neat rows of bottles with the other travellers, as close to the back as they could. As the security officers passed, Vegard ducked behind a display, pretending to contemplate the bottles of amber akevitt. Bård watched as the officers passed, started to nudge Vegard with his toe, and used his mind instead. Vegard straightened up with a grin, then, holding a bottle for verisimilitude. 

They paid at the counter, and then faced the task of getting out of the airport. It wasn't like trying to go _forward_ through security, but it did arouse comment. The security guard who politely told them that boarding was the other way was a small brown man, and given the ordeal they'd just had, it was easy to tell him that they'd really just changed their minds about flying, that Vegard--who did look sweaty and worn out--was starting to feel like he was coming down with something and didn't want to infect other people on the plane, or subject himself to uncomfortable changes in air pressure. The guard smiled sympathetically and let them go on their way.

Gisela had recommended the train anyway. On the Flytoget back into the city, because it was impossible to tell if the occasional gawkers were Bright Court flunkies or just fans, the brothers bent their heads together and planned in whispers. They debated the merits of transferring at Oslo Central Station versus Lysaker, and eventually decided that Oslo, while it would be expected of them, would also be more crowded, giving pursuers less opportunity to track them down. 

When the train disgorged them at the station, Bård bought two tickets for the 23.25 to Bergen while Vegard played with his phone behind a pillar. The Bright Court would be looking for two men, but of course it would be foolish to actually split up. Tickets bought, they had a few hours to kill, and slipped off to UFF UnderGround. 

Forty-five minutes later, they left UFF with large bags of secondhand clothing, paused for a moment at a pharmacy, and then went to Starbucks. The two men who emerged from one of the single washrooms fifteen minutes later were unrecognizable. Vegard wore non-prescription horn-rimmed glasses. His telltale curls were tucked up under a neon orange knit cap, and he wore a red and black plaid flannel jacket over a black Iron Maiden t-shirt, and faded green jeans that were several sizes too big for him, held up with a belt. His tan hiking boots were scuffed. Cheap self-tanner, slathered on and then washed off in a hurry, made his hands look labour-stained, as if grease had been worked so deeply into them that this was as clean as they would ever get. Bård, meanwhile, had just managed to coax his blond hair into a ponytail, and he wore a short-sleeved button-up shirt, rust-coloured slacks, and a grey tweed jacket with elbow patches slung over one shoulder. He'd opted for a pair of non-prescription violet-tinted John Lennon glasses, and faded white sneakers. Each had another change of clothes--Vegard's was in a military surplus backpack, and Bård's was in a slightly stained blue and white canvas backpack. They also had fresh boxer briefs, basic toiletries, contact lens cleaning solution, and a refill of their various prescriptions. Just in case.

***

The studio was in Ullern. A visit to the library, a call to directory information, and then a call to the property management company confirmed that the studio had been rented to an M. Aruviel for the next three days. Then it had just been a matter of walking, with a pause in the park for lunch. The brothers would be at the studio, and Finn and Brynjar could help them out, bring them home, and then...do whatever came next. Disintegrate, probably. You didn’t hear about changelings walking around once they’d served their purpose. Finn wasn’t wild about the prospect, but there was nothing he could do about it, and anyway right now they had a job to do.

"It looks deserted," Brynjar said. 

"Might be just a heavy-duty glamour," Finn said doubtfully. The main door was padlocked. He frowned at the lock for a second, and then snapped it, and pulled the door open.

The place was dark and quiet. It felt utterly empty. Except...

"Magic," said Brynjar, nostrils flaring as if he could scent it. He took off straight ahead, and Finn had to run to keep up. 

But it wasn't... "Brynjar, slow down!" Finn said, a bit sharply, as Brynjar burst through the doors of the main studio. Finn heard a crash and a groan, and groped for the lights. Brynjar was sprawled on a stage. It looked like recent efforts had been made to tidy the place up, but no one was rehearsing or filming here, that was for sure. And the magic that moved in slow eddies around him wasn't...quite...

"Finn," Brynjar said, climbing to his feet and staring straight at something in the wings. Finn jogged down and saw only blank wooden panelling. 

Brynjar took off into the wings, and Finn heard him springing locks and opening cupboard doors. He returned with a crowbar. "Brynjar?" Brynjar started prying up the panelling. "Brynjar, don’t wreck their place!"

Then Finn saw the glyph limned over the wall where the panelling had been. He gaped for a few seconds, and then pulled out the Massive Cell Phone of Doom. Brynjar grabbed his arm and pulled, and Finn trusted him to not let him run into anything as he dialled.

***

_21:43 PM_

"112, what is your emergency?"

"The old television studio, the one out by the train tracks, is going to blow up. Get everyone out of the area. Fast. Please!"

"Sir, can you-- Sir?"

***

_21:45 PM_

"Good evening, and thanks for calling IKEA. My name is Cengiz. We’re just closing, but is there something quick I can help you with?"

"There’s a, um, gas leak next door. Get everyone out of your store. If there’s a north entrance, that’s best."

"Sir--?"

***

_21:48 PM_

_Riiiiiiiing._

_Ring._

_Riiiiiiiing._

_Riiiiiiing._

_Ring._

_Riiiiiiing._

_Riiiiiiing._

_Ring._

_Riiiiiiing._

"Tesla Motors. This is security, and this had better be a genuine emergency."

"Studio's gonna blow up. Get away. At least get away from the glass."

"What--?"

***

_21:53 PM_

"You have reached the Ullern School. Our office is staffed between 8:00 and 17:00. If you would like general information about our location, staff, school events, and important dates, please consult our website. Otherwise, please leave your name and number at the tone, and we will return your call as soon as possible."

"The studio next door is going to blow up. I don’t know if there are even people there now, but if you can hear this in real time, please make an announcement and get everyone away."

Finn pressed the end button, and frowned. His implanted memories told him that for his warning to be successful, the system he'd called needed a certain kind of answering device, and someone in the office to hear it. "I hope that worked. I don't know if it did."

"Let me," Brynjar said. "They have a system with speakers. I can make it speak."

***

_Attention, custodial staff of Ullern School. This is an emergency. Please exit the building immediately by the southwest entrance. If you are unable to exit the building, please take cover in the basement. The building next door is about to blow up. Thank you, and have a good evening._

***

_21:59 PM_

"Thanks for calling Norwegian State Railways, Vækkerø Station. How can we help you today?"

"Bomb in the studio! Take cover!"

***

At precisely ten in the evening, the Bestum Community Broadcasting Centre exploded. The concussion shattered most of the windows within a three-block radius. Debris did millions of kroner in damage to the adjacent school, Tesla dealership, railway station, and IKEA. No casualties were reported; someone had phoned in warnings to 112 and all four of the surrounding buildings, and broadcast a further warning over the school's PA, enabling the custodian and one teacher to take shelter in the basement.

A very old cellphone was found in pieces and partially melted in the studio parking lot, but the SIM card was retrievable, and the calls had indeed come from it. Intriguingly, the number had once, nearly a decade ago, belonged to Vegard Ylvisåker, but before tonight it hadn't been used in years. A call to the Ylvisåker household confirmed that this wasn't the phone Vegard used, not anymore, and in fact his wife had recently given it to a homeless man. ("I know it was silly," she told the investigators the next morning. "He just...he reminded me a little bit of Vegard, and I wanted to do something for him. I hope he's all right. No, Vegard doesn't know about it. He's in Bergen tonight. Yes, we talked just before midnight last night.") 

Investigators sought the caller--they wouldn’t know whether he was a hero or a suspect until they found him--but they turned up only dead ends, and arson investigators found nothing at all, leading them to believe that the bomb of which the caller had spoken in the final call had been mere shorthand for the impending explosion.

***

Dinner was chicken korma, palak paneer, and dosas, with ras malai for dessert, and then they had less than an hour to go. As they ascended to the Bergen platform, Bård looked around, and was satisfied that they had not been followed.

They'd paid for their own compartment. As the train pulled away from the station, as the streetlights began to slide past their window, Bård started to laugh. Vegard looked at him curiously, and Bård said, "Some day, huh? We said we were going to rest."

Vegard nodded slowly, his head lolling against the back of the seat. "And instead we were kidnapped, and found out there are elves in the world and we're telepathic, and visited the faeries' parliament, and found that one old friend was dead and another one just got assaulted, and you got punched in the testicles and I beat the hell out of a tree stump, and we nearly got grabbed in the airport, and now we're on the train to Bergen because we're on the run from shadowy magical forces. No wonder I'm tired." He leaned forward, and pulled off his boots and socks, so that his feet were bare. Then he went into his backpack, fished the case for his contacts out of his suit jacket pocket, and blinked his lenses into it. 

Bård reflected. "I feel terrible for Jessalyn. And for your friend. And I'm tired and achy and I would give anything to be back with my family right now. But..."

Vegard's lips curled into a knowing smile. "You're enjoying yourself."

"Yeah," Bård admitted. 

The wattage of the smile went up a little. "Me too."

There was a knock at the door, and they both jumped, but it was the conductor, asking to see their stamped tickets, which they produced readily. 

Bård texted Maria to say that he was going to Bergen and would call from there. Vegard stared for awhile with a dubious look on his face, and finally pulled his phone out too. "I don't know about you," he said as he typed, "but this is the last time for me that I'm going to use my phone to contact home. Clone or no clone, if they're tracing my calls I don't want to lead anyone to my family by contacting them over and over. Especially when I'm not there."

"Yeah," Bård sighed. He texted as much to Maria, and then put his phone away. 

For a little while, he sat, watching the suburbs of Oslo rush by. It was boring. 

"I have an idea," he said when they'd left Lysaker. He rummaged around in Vegard's bag for the akevitt. "We’re stuck here for seven hours. Nothing can get at us. It's an overnight trip, so no one's going to bother us. We’re going to get you drunk, and see if we can get you to remember what happened."

"Okay," Vegard said. "Why just me?"

"Because you say you don’t remember, but every so often you’ll say something, and you don’t know where it came from. Or do something you swear you have no recollection of. Every year you send me the same text about Tomte Nissen being in your living room, and a photo that’s all swallowed up in glare, and every year you completely disavow it the next day. I think your memories are a lot closer to the surface than mine. And I know you had adventures that I just didn’t."

Vegard cocked his head. "How?"

"Audhild Kristtorn?"

"Bloody hell," Vegard said. The name was like a spell that conjured tears. 

Bård got up, and put a hand on his shoulder. "You sit tight. I’ll be right back." He went out to the Meny Kafé, and returned with ice, two Cokes and two plastic cups.

Vegard looked dubious as he peeled off the security seal and poured a generous amount of akevitt into a cup. Then he held it above his head and said, "To Audhild Kristtorn!" 

"Skål!" Bård cried, holding his Coke aloft.

Vegard poured the contents of the cup down his throat, grimaced, and shuddered. "Now what do I do?"

"What do you remember?"

"Nothing. Literally nothing. Just a name." Tears were still leaking from his eyes, and he pulled off the knit cap and staunched the flow with it. He dabbed at his eyes for a few minutes more, and then said, "I’ve been drunk a few times since 2007, you know. And wound up with fewer memories, not more."

"You weren’t working at it, though," Bård pointed out. "And the akevitt probably hasn’t kicked in yet." He poured more. Vegard downed it obediently, but it took awhile this time. "Now: Audhild Kristtorn."

"Well, I don’t remember," Vegard said, but something about the way he shook his head let Bård know that he was starting to feel the effects of the akevitt. He sat, frowning, for a few minutes. Then: "When she got angry, she got taller. Literally taller. I gave her my true name. She called me the holiest of fools." His brow furrowed. "I’m not _holy._ "

"What is your true name?" Bård asked, mystified. 

"Ve--" Vegard looked up, laughing, and shook his head, curls bouncing. "Oh-ho-ho-ho, you’re not gonna get me that way, Bård. _Bård Urheim Ylvisåker._ Wait, I take, I take it back." He let out a sigh. "Phew."

"So our true names are just, like, our legal names."

"Yeah."

"The names that are up on Wikipedia."

"Yeah. Ooh, that’s bad, isn’t it?" Vegard pulled out his phone and started fiddling.

"What are you doing?"

"Editing Wikipedia!"

It seemed to take him a long time, but when Vegard was finished turning himself into Vegard Montmorency Ylvisåker and his brother into Bård Waverley Ylvisåker, he put his phone away and sat back in the seat, closing his eyes, and said, "I remember."

"You do?"

"I was supposed to listen. The nightmare said I was supposed to listen. And I did. Months, I listened. Then Audhild Kristtorn said, ‘Vegard, speak!’ And I did. And I said the right thing. Only now she's dead." Vegard balled up his knit cap and sobbed into it until Bård pried it loose from his hands and replaced it with a tissue. Bård switched seats so that he was next to his brother, and tried to put an arm around him, but Vegard shook his head and twitched away. 

When the tears had subsided somewhat, Bård said, gently, "What was the right thing to say?"

Vegard took a few hiccupping breaths, and settled back in the chair. "The truth."

"I mean, what were the words?"

Vegard looked annoyed. "It's not about _words_. Words don't matter, not, like, for that. It mattered that it was the truth. Because I listened. Like the nightmare told me to."

"The nightmare?"

"She told me lots of important stuff." Vegard shifted in his seat, turning to face Bård. "We have to remember this part. It’s important. She said...it's not about sides. Don’t let people sort it into sides. We have to remember that."

"What else did Kristtorn say in this nightmare?"

Vegard shook his head. "No, no! The nightmare said to listen and Kristtorn said to speak. Not the same at all."

"Did either of them say anything else?"

"They said lots of things."

"I mean, did they say anything important?"

"Listen and think. The nightmare said to listen and think."

Bård sighed. He splashed some akevitt into his Coke. It was passable. "None of this is helpful, Vegard."

Vegard sat back and folded his arms over his chest. "It was to me," he said in a small voice.

Bård let him sulk for a few minutes while he devised a set of better, more pointed questions. This really wasn’t fair. Bård had _trained_ his memory. They’d been interview guests alongside a memory expert once, and Bård had been gratified to hear that he was already using the techniques the man taught, associating the things he wanted to remember with a spatial location. Vegard, on the other hand, had just made some awkward joke about smell. He couldn’t even remember the lyrics to his own songs, for god’s sake. 

And now, _now_ , before Bård could ask any of the questions he’d come up with, Vegard was asleep with his cheek smeared against the window. 

Bård took the cup of akevitt out of his brother’s slack hands before it spilled, and drank it down. Then he, too, took out his contacts, settled into his seat, and slept as the train rushed through the darkened countryside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Gesaffelstein's "Pursuit" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB8Ci7X5HUU&feature=youtu.be


	5. Shining Through

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vegard's quest for grindage / Shields up! / Better lenses: the next generation / Can you see the real me? / A digital sandwich

Bård drifted awake with the conductor announcing that they were approaching Bergen, terminal station, please take all your personal belongings with you as you exit the train and thank you for blah blah blah. His neck ached fiercely, and he had Viking breath. 

Beside him, Vegard stirred and let out a moan that ended in a cry of disgust. "I _drooled_ ," he lamented, scrubbing at the side of his face. His eyes darted all around the compartment, and he grabbed up a wad of tissues and tried to clean the trail off the window, and sop up the wet spot on his t-shirt. Eventually he gave up and stuffed the tissues in the little garbage bag that hung from the wall. He put his socks and boots on and sank back in the seat as the train crept into the centre of Bergen. "My head hurts."

Bård's head hurt too, but it was the tension in his neck from sleeping funny. He handed Vegard the last Coke. Vegard downed the can, let out a quiet and admirably controlled burp, and blinked hard a few times. He sat up a little straighter, pushed Bård gently forward, and then, with one hand bracing his brother's shoulder, used the other to knead out the worst knots. He even got that tricky spot under the one shoulder blade. "How did you know?" Bård asked.

The train finally shuddered to a halt. "I could feel it," Vegard said as he shouldered his backpack and put the hat back on, tucking his curls underneath. He fished the glasses out of the case in his pocket, and put them on. Then he took an appraising look at Bård, who had neatened his ponytail and slipped on his own glasses and was now putting on his tweed jacket, and then Vegard took the blue and white backpack as well. 

"You don't need to do that," Bård protested.

"I don't not need to do that as much as you need to not do it," Vegard retorted, pushing open the compartment door and joining the drowsy throng in the corridors. Bård realized, then, that his brother was still just that wee bit drunk. 

They grabbed Gatorades in the little kiosk in the station and sat down on a bench to drink them. The quick massage had improved Bård's headache a lot, but he worked out the residual stiffness with a round of the exercises the physiotherapist had given him. It was thus that he noticed, off to his side, the two very blond men in suits showing a picture of Ylvis to a pair of middle-aged women, who laughed so hard that one had to wipe her eyes. 

Bård turned with a jerk that didn't hurt nearly as much as it would have fifteen seconds ago and said to Vegard, "We have to go. Now."

Vegard looked where he'd been looking, and got up, once again picking up both backpacks. "Go," he said. 

"I'm not leaving you!" Bård hissed. 

"No need for heroics."

"I'm not being heroic; you have all my stuff." 

"They're looking for two men. Just pretend we're not together, is all I ask." Vegard got up. Bård gave him to the count of ten, and then got up and walked in a slightly different direction. He took up residence behind a sign, took a moment to slip his contacts back in, and goggled. 

Vegard had walked right up to the blond men. "Hey," he said loudly in his most obnoxious approximation of California English, "do you dudes work here?"

One man's lip curled in distaste. The other said, "Yes."

"Um...snacker Englishk?"

Bård had to clamp a hand over his mouth. The lip-curling man had a hand over his face. The other man twitched a couple of times, but managed to compose his own face into something like a pleasant smile. "We do."

"So, like, do you know where me and my bros can, like, get some grindage?"

"I beg your pardon," the man in the suit said. "Grindage?"

Vegard spoke more slowly and loudly. "You know...chow? Munchies? Om nom nom? Food!" He was standing quite close to the man now--probably breathing akevitt fumes all over him--and very loudly, with exaggerated mouth movements, he said, "WE...WANT...TO...EAT... SOME...FOOD."

"Okay, okay," the man in the suit said. "If you exit just there, walk left on Strømgaten, and take a right on Lars Hilles Gate, then another left at Torggaten, you will find a bakery that should be open. Have a good day." He turned away abruptly. 

The other probably-an-elf plucked at his companion's sleeve, to no avail, and finally he turned to Vegard himself and unfolded the picture. "Pardon, but while you are here, have you seen these men?"

Vegard snorted. "Why, what'd they do, a drive-by moussing? They look like a coupla pretty boys."

"They are wanted in conjunction with a suspicious explosion."

"'Kay, well if I see 'em, I'll kick their skinny little keisters, how's that? Not even for you or anything; I'll just, like, do it."

"That won't be necessary, sir." Both men moved away. 

"I'll still totally do it!" Vegard shouted after them. Neither of them glanced in his direction, and he shrugged, and wandered out to the doors. 

Bård joined him outside, and together they collapsed against the wall and laughed until tears came. 

"Do you know what the best part is?" Vegard said, when he could speak again.

"What?"

"They're wandering all over a Bergen train station with a picture of Ylvis, going, 'Have you seen these men?'!"

***

"So you could feel my neck hurting," Bård said later, over cinnamon buns and hot chocolate in Godt Brød.

"You were moving like you had a headache, and it occurred to me that I could check it out, so I did."

"This has the potential to make things very very weird," Bård said. "Do you know what I'm thinking?"

"No, what?"

"No, I'm actually asking: is what I'm thinking still private?"

"Obviously, if I could mistake what you're saying," Vegard pointed out. "We've been able to do this for years and years without even knowing it. I think unless the feeling is very strong, we have to make some kind of effort." Hung over, he'd opted for tea instead of hot chocolate, and now he took a sip. "Do you want me to make the effort?"

Bård really didn't want anyone in his head, but... "Yeah," he said. "For science."

Vegard put down his tea and closed his eyes. "First and foremost, you're freaking out," he said, and Bård felt his anxiety being dialled down for him. He got the feeling that he could have dialled it up again if he really wanted to, but this was a relief. "But you're thinking...of a white wooden horse with red polka-dots and a red yarn mane and tail...on wheels. The kind that a child would ride." Vegard opened his eyes. "There's other stuff underneath it, and I could get to it if I wanted, but...right now is like peeking in a window, and to get at the rest I would have to open the door and go in."

"Can you do that?" Bård demanded. "I mean, I am _not_ asking you to, but do you have that capability?"

"I think I could," Vegard said slowly, "but it would be too far. It would hurt you. And I'd be in your mind, so it would hurt me too. Do you want to read my mind now? Hold on, I'll think of something."

"It's okay," Bård said. He tried to think of a brick wall. Vegard's brow furrowed. Bård thought of a steel sheet, with rivets. He thought of concrete blocks. A wall of light, crackling with blue electricity. 

Vegard gave him a gentle, weary smile. "Bård, what are you trying to do?"

"Figuring out how to shield."

"Okay, try this," Vegard said. "I’ll show you." He closed his eyes again, and Bård’s mind was filled with his own voice, saying, : _Give me some privacy, please, Vegard._ :

Bård grinned. : _Get out of my head, Vegard._ : 

Vegard flashed him a satisfied smile. "There."

"It would still be useful to have a shield, though. Just thinking of some of the strong feelings I might want to, er, have."

"These would be totally new feelings? Feelings you _haven’t_ had over the past nine years without me noticing at all?" Vegard grinned. "But...I guess it would have been very useful on Thursday night," he admitted. 

"Yeah? What would _you_ have done differently?"

"Walking out of the office under my own power would have been nice," Vegard retorted. "And this time we were lucky; Jessalyn just wanted our attention."

"Well, she got it! She even asked beforehand, although I had no idea what she was asking."

"Think what kind of a weapon the stone would be, though, Bård. Something that would take us both out so completely that we wouldn’t even want to escape it."

Bård shuddered. "I hadn’t thought of that." 

"You're right. We should learn to control this thing. We don’t have a lot of advantages in this, this world. We should make the most of what we do have."

***

The name of the place Gisela had sent them to was Skinner Gjennom Industri, and it was a blocky and unassuming building by the quay in Laksevåg. It looked like it had been built in the twenties, but trouble had been taken to spruce it up, and some of those efforts were recent. It was, fortunately, open on Saturdays. Vegard and Bård stepped into the foyer, where a pretty dark-haired woman gave them a bright smile and said, "How can I help you two gentlemen today?"

There was nothing about her to suggest anything elvish. How were they supposed to ask for what they needed? Finally, Bård said, "We’re the Ylvisåkers. Er...someone might have told you yesterday that we were coming from Oslo?"

To their relief, she said, "Of course, Bård and Vegard. You’ll want to talk to one of our technicians. Come along to the back."

She conducted them to a small office divided into two parts. One part held some cabinets and a dizzying array of equipment; the other part had a desk and two chairs. "Have a seat right here, and someone will be with you shortly."

They sat. For a moment. Vegard was soon up and headed for the equipment in the other part of the room, but when he got to the divide, there was an electric-sounding snap and he stopped short with a surprised little squeak. Frowning, he tried again, with the same results. 

"Look," Bård said, pointing at the walls. Right at the divide, opposite each other, sat two abstract paintings. "I can’t see them doing anything, but...both times that you tried, I found myself...noticing them."

Vegard was reaching out one more time when the door banged open and a laughing blonde woman grabbed his arm. " _Don’t_ do that," she said, steering him over to a chair. "As much fun as I’m sure we’re all having, the third time it gets more serious. Now. The Ylvisåkers, right? I’m Felicity. What can I do for you?"

"We need to be able to see through glamour," Bård told her. Somehow magical force field paintings made it easier to say out loud. 

"All right," she said. "Personally?" 

"I’m sorry," Bård said, "I don’t understand." 

"Do you need to see through it or film through it?" 

"See through it," Vegard said. 

She wrote something down. "I see that you’re already both wearing glasses..." 

"The glasses are disguises," Vegard told her. "They don’t actually do anything. We have contact lenses." 

She frowned, and wrote something else down. "Disposable or hard?" 

"Disposable." 

"All right," she said. "Do you have the prescription with you?" 

"Not on me," Bård said. 

"I have mine," Vegard said, pulling out his wallet and fishing around until he produced a piece of paper. 

"Thanks," she said, taking it from him. She turned to Bård. "And I’m sorry, I’ll need your actual lenses." 

Bård shrugged, found the case in his backpack, blinked them out into the solution, and handed them over. 

"Thanks," she said. "The new ones should be ready by three this afternoon." 

"Do you take credit cards?" Vegard asked. 

She grinned. "These, actually, are on the house. Courtesy of our CEO, who wants a word." 

"Who’s that?" Bård asked a bit warily. 

"Dr. Montaniel. I’ll send you up." 

"We wouldn’t want to take up his time," Bård protested. 

"He said you might not recognize the name," she told them, "but if you saw how his face lit up when the call came from Dr. Freidag yesterday, there would be none of this nonsense about wasting his time." 

***

Five minutes later, she showed them to a second-floor office. The room itself was not very lushly appointed, but it had a fresh coat of paint and the desk was nice. The sign on the door proclaimed this to be the office of Dr. K. Montaniel.

"Bård, Vegard," the man said, leaving his desk to shake their hands. He was blond and fine-featured like the other lios alfar they'd met, but shorter than most, bespectacled, and strikingly young. He was also dressed more casually than other lios alfar they’d seen, with a violet silk shirt open over a black t-shirt and black jeans. "So good to see you again." He grinned. "You have no idea who I am, do you?"

They shook their heads. "Our memories got scrambled," Vegard said apologetically.

"Oh!" he said, his eyes widening in dismay. "Oh, I’m so sorry. What happened?"

Bård gave him half a shrug. "Magic."

"Right, right. You’ve got no reason to trust me."

"If you didn’t know," Vegard said, "why did you know we wouldn’t recognize you?"

The elf quirked his mouth. "Well, I was hoping to impress you with it, but now I don’t know if it’ll make any difference. But--" He whistled nine notes, and suddenly a very different man stood in front of them. His skin was olive, his hair in its ponytail was black, his nose was smaller, his eyes were more widely spaced, and many small rings adorned his ears. "Does this help at all?"

"A little," Bård said, squinting at him. He'd seen that face. He _knew_ that face.

"My name is Kai Fjelltop," the elf said. "We met in Kristiansand while I was finishing my PhD. I gave you one of the glamour filters I’d developed for cameras, and you let me vent at you about the svartalfar experience." He grinned. 

"Right! Kai!" Vegard said. "You had books. Physics books." 

"Naturally," Kai said. 

Vegard reached across the desk and gave him a quick hug. Bård tried to give him a manlier forearm-clasp-and-pat-on-the-back combo, but Kai pulled him into a real hug quickly enough. 

"I’ve seen some of your shows," Kai told them. "I’m sorry none of the elven footage made it onto _Norway’s Most Wonderful_ , though. Well, except for Solveig’s gnome." 

Vegard sucked in a breath and glowered. "Obnoxious little wretch. And her ‘translating’ him all fuzzy-wuzzy. I was glad no one could hear him; there’s some things you can’t say even on TVNorge." 

" _This_ ," Bård said with a pointed look at Vegard, "is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about." He started to laugh. "I wonder if he actually showed up at the gala." 

"Ohhhhh, he did," Kai said with an evil grin. "I guess I should have known from your lack of reaction that you couldn’t see him anymore." 

"What did he do?" 

"Let’s just say I hope you had those tuxes cleaned _really_ well." 

Vegard wrinkled his nose. "Ew." 

Kai looked curiously at him. "So you do remember the gnome, then?" 

"A little...I guess. I remember being there. I remember how disgusted I was. I’ve seen the footage, but it’s like...it’s like..." 

"He blurts stuff out," Bård said, "and has no idea where it comes from. We tried to get him liquored up last night, to see if that uncovered anything..." 

"Did it help?" Kai asked. 

Bård shook his head. "Not really. It was all, like, ‘Don’t choose sides.’ ‘Speak the truth.’ ‘The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao.’" 

"That’s not bad advice, any of it," Kai pointed out. "But I can see how you might want something more specific. There is allegedly booze that will do it, but the recipe was destroyed during the Victory of the Light, and the last big batch was lost after WWII." 

"The King’s Mead?" Bård said. 

"You’ve heard of it?" 

"That was what started us out last time." 

"No way." 

"Way," Bård said with mock gravity. 

"Where did you find it?" 

Vegard responded with an expressive shrug. "It wears off, though. And it takes the memories of what you saw with it. Mostly." 

"That’s truly unfortunate," Kai said. "I’m so sorry." 

Bård tried to lighten the mood by changing the subject. "So you’re..." He gestured at Kai. "Is that glamour, again?" 

"Passing as a brighty? Yeah. My folks have disowned me all over again, of course. Well, Mom. Dad still e-mails. And my sibs are fine with it. It was partly a way to make the ride easier, I’ll give you that, but it was also an experiment." 

"If you can pull it off," Vegard said, "why doesn’t everyone? I mean, not that you should have to, but..." 

"It does make things easier," Kai sighed. "A _lot_ easier. I should write a book. But like I said, it was an experiment. An extra layer of glamour, impervious to standard methods, unlockable only with a soundkey. My roommate helped me develop it. I’m sure there are ways to crack it, but with the way the laws are going I started to get very nervous about further research in that direction. Can you imagine what the Bright Court would do if suddenly _anybody_ could be svartalfar? Well, you’re humans. You know how it gets when suddenly the folks you think of as enemy could be among you." 

"Witch hunts," Bård said. "Red Menace." 

"Satanic Panic," Vegard added. "Homeland Security." 

"So yeah. Until things change, this discovery does _not_ go public. But I trust you guys, and I trust Dr. Freidag, and she thinks you need the extra protection, so your contacts are equipped with a soundkey interface. It should penetrate even the highest-level camouflage glamours, so if you ever worry that there’s something being hidden from you, just whistle up some Johnny Nash. The first six notes of ‘I Can See Clearly Now.’" He glanced at the clock. "Look, it’s nearly my lunchtime..." 

The brothers got to their feet. "Sure," Bård said. "We didn’t mean to keep you." 

"No, I mean, why don’t we get out of here? My partner is an amazing cook, and I’d love for you to meet Maddy. She’s a technobard. And no offence, but Vegard, you look like you could use something on your stomach." 

"I really could," Vegard said. 

"Technobard?" Bård said. 

"You’ve heard the stories about people who can weave enchantments by playing the lute or the pipes or by singing or whatever? Maddy has her laptop, her mixer, her MIDI controller, her speakers, and Pro Tools. Not as portable, but when I met her, she’d just used a bass drop to take down a guy who was spiking drinks with date rape drugs." 

"Very cool," Vegard said with large eyes. 

"Yeah, we’d love to join you for lunch," Bård said. 

"Great!" Kai rubbed his hands together, and pulled out a phone. "Let me just...text...the ...roomies...annnnnnd...sent." 

The brothers put on their disguises again, and Kai whistled thirteen notes--Bård recognized the tune as Trevor Rabin's "Cover Up"--to reassume the guise of a lios alfar, and they took the tram to a more residential area of Laksevåg. On the way, speaking in low voices, they filled Kai in on the events of the day before. 

"Hefty," he said. "I’ll be honest, I thought Dr. Freidag was being a little paranoid when she first explained your situation, because going after humans is just ridiculous, but it sounds like you make someone in the Bright Court very nervous. For which congratulations, by the way. They’re...I thought when I met you guys that things were about as bad as they could get, but it’s only gotten sillier in the years since. I should show you something when we get to my place. I don’t know if you’ll laugh or cry." 

***

Kai’s house was one of the larger ones. " _Nice!_ " Bård said with a whistle, as they approached the front walk.

"Oi oi oi," said Vegard. 

Kai grinned. "The lenses have been good to me. It’s opened up a whole new branch of technology to elves and Underjordiske, one we’ve been hearing about for more than a century, and can only just now get in on. I’m getting orders from as far away as Mexico and Laos. I was happy in my little flat, with my flatmates, but a couple of things I heard from colleagues made me realize that living that modestly would invite suspicion. And then I got the house and it was too big and empty, so I begged my flatmates to move in with me."

In the foyer, he whistled the same nine notes he’d whistled in the office, and became a svartalfr again. "What was that?" Vegard asked.

"The spell to power down my glamour," Kai explained. "It’s an actual spell, though, not the soundkey you'll be able to use with your contacts. I wouldn’t want just anyone to be able to take this off me." 

"I gathered that," Vegard said, hanging up his plaid jacket with the glasses and knit cap tucked into the pockets. "But what’s the song?"

Kai laughed. "Oh! ‘The Real Me.’ And when I say it’s by Wasp, Maddy rolls her eyes and gets all pedantic. I think it was originally the Who."

Then they were in the living room, and they switched to English for the sake of the flatmates, who were from British Columbia. Chuck was a great ebony refrigerator of a man, with dreadlocks in a ponytail that reached to the small of his back, and his beard in two long braids. His sister Madeleine was tall and solid and strong, with glasses and a voluminous afro. Kai gave them both hello hugs, but the hug with Maddy was quick and friendly, and the hug with Chuck was more lingering, and the way he and Kai fit together made it clear that they were a couple.

Chuck had made salmon cakes, sweet potato oven fries with roasted garlic aioli, and a spinach and mushroom and pepper salad with a choice of dressings. It looked splendid on the plates, brilliant pink and orange and green. They ate in the dining room, albeit at a table that had a stack of books, an open looseleaf binder, and the guts of a laptop at one end.

"Easiest thing in the world to whip up," Chuck said, when the brothers praised the meal. "All you’ve got to do to the fries is cut ‘em and oil ‘em and bake ‘em at two-thirty--or four-fifty, if you speak Fahrenheit--for about fifteen minutes total. And the cakes are just a pound of salmon, a raw egg, half a cup of whipping cream, and some salt and pepper in the food processor."

"There’s butter, I taste butter," Bård said.

"They’re fried in butter."

"If I start borrowing your accent," Vegard said, looking at both siblings, "I’m not mocking it. I sort of collect them."

"Understood," Maddy grinned.

"So, like, how did you meet Ylvis?" Chuck asked Kai.

Kai shook his head in good-natured mystification. "In the library, of all places, right guys?"

"We honestly don’t remember," Bård said. "Apparently we drank something called the King’s Mead that let us see past glamour, but after the Solstice it wore off and we forgot everything."

"Tough break," Chuck exclaimed. "I’ve heard of the King’s Mead, but never that part."

"Well, all the people who could tell you aren’t going to remember," Kai said wryly. "Anyway, they were looking for answers at the university library."

"Answers to what?" Maddy asked. 

Kai flashed a smile at Bård and Vegard. "I seem to recall that’s something you two wished you’d taken more time to work out." He glanced at his flatmates. "I don’t know, when you first started seeing us, what kinds of answers would you have wanted?"

"Where the last week had gone," Maddy said, with an edge to her voice. 

Chuck appeared to think it over. "For the first three days, I seriously just thought there was a Star Trek convention in town."

Vegard let out a whoop of laughter, and Bård put his forehead down on the table for a moment.

"But no, I can see what you mean. Did you end up finding what you wanted?" Chuck seemed to realize the futility of that question, and turned to Kai. "Did they end up finding what they wanted?"

"I told them a little bit about the Underjordiske, if I recall correctly," Kai said. "And a little about elves."

"Anything about how magic _works_?" Vegard asked. "I can’t imagine not wanting to find out. Because everything I have known up to now--everything I _know_ I have known--says that it can’t."

"You seemed to really want to know," Kai told him. "You wanted to look at my physics books, but they were over your head. And you were more concerned with just, like, navigating, and we didn’t have a lot of time."

"The thing with magic," Maddy said, "and I don’t know how much of this you already found out, but it doesn’t sound like you'd remember for it to matter, is that it’s a whole layer of physics you just don’t have access to unless A, you have a sentient mind, which obviously you do, and B, you’ve had it used on you, which most people haven't. It’s like... you know how at our level we can see curves and shades and whatnot, but at the quantum level, the universe is digital?"

Vegard and Bård took awhile to parse this out in English, but then they nodded slowly. 

"Well, if you have a sentient mind, and someone acts on you using this other paradigm, then you have access to a level of abstraction below the quantum level, where things are smooth again. So the universe becomes a smoothness sandwich."

"A digital sandwich," Vegard corrected after a few seconds. The others looked at him blankly, and he explained, "You name a sandwich after the filling, not the bread."

"Too true," Maddy said with a grin. 

Chuck's eyebrows furrowed. "You have a very...rigorous mind."

"He does," Bård said.

"Yeah. Sorry."

"No, don’t be sorry," Maddy said. "You’re musical, too, right?"

Vegard shrugged. "I pay attention to it."

"Don’t listen to him," Bård said. "He’s being modest. He knows as much as any of the strictly professional musicians we’ve worked with. Maybe more."

"Great! Vegard, you want to learn this stuff?" Maddy asked as she carried her plate to the dishwasher. 

"Well, yeah. That’s why I asked."

"I mean, do you want to learn how to _work with_ this stuff? I don’t know how much we could cover in one day, but it seems like you’ve got the kind of mind that could pick up the basics of what I do relatively easily." She returned to the table, saw the look on his face, and gave him a smile. "Well, I'll be in my studio anyway, because I've got a German chocolate cake that needs attention. If you feel like it, come on up. I'll even share my cake with you."

"Really," Chuck said when she was gone, "you should go for it. Maddy's a good teacher, and she's picky about who she takes on, so you're getting a golden opportunity. And if you're one of those sick freaks who likes coconut, I'm given to understand that it's also very good cake."

Kai put in, "Even if she can get you to the point where you can detect magic, and see what it’s doing, you'll be a lot safer. Bård and I can hang out, right?"

"Absolutely," Bård said.

"I might still be a little bit drunk," Vegard said dubiously.

"That’s the best time," Chuck assured him. "Not for later, mind, but for just learning, for adults anyway. They’ve done studies. Kids younger than five pick it up easily, but as an adult you have the best chance if you’re drunk or high or sleep-deprived. Your inhibitions are just that little bit lowered."

"Even if he's sobered up, he's still sleep-deprived," Bård assured them.

"I’ll give it a try," Vegard said with a sigh that turned into a grin. "Bård, a large bearded man wants to take me away for cake and magic instruction."

Bård’s lips twitched, but all he said back was, "Have fun, but don’t come crying to me when you get sorted into Hufflepuff."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) This is, of course, a work of fantasy, but Chuck's recipe for salmon cakes is delicious, delicious reality. It also works with other kinds of fish, shrimp, and scallops. 
> 
> 2) I gave my notice at the factory today. And there was much rejoicing. 
> 
> 3) Suggested musical pairing: Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAIFUvQiPQc (Trevor Rabin's "Cover Up" was more thematically suited, but I couldn't find it online.)


	6. Gods, Quests, and Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The voice of the All-father / Sorted / A pertinent question yields a new objective / The arsenal / Counterintuitive Survival Strategies #3: getting rid of your old cassettes

As Chuck led Vegard up the stairs, Kai made a face and said to Bård, "Bother...I was going to show you both that thing I got. Well, do you still want to see it?"

"Sure," Bård told him. They put away their dishes, and he followed Kai into a sunny ground-floor room that seemed to serve him as a study and workshop. 

Kai booted up the computer, and went searching through his files. "I joined a sort of... magical businesspeople's guild in Bergen. In theory it's open to everyone, regardless of species, but the Underjordiske never come to more than a handful of meetings, and I'm the only svartalfr who's managed to stick it out. And that says something, because nobody knows I am. My work address is on their e-mail list, and this...didn't go _to_ their e-mail list, but it looks like someone harvested the names from it. Here," he said finally, and clicked play.

The face that filled the screen was craggy and lined, but full of stern vitality. The man had a disordered grey-blond mane of hair, a blond beard shot through with grey, a hawkish nose, and one blue eye visible; the other was obscured by a floppy wide-brimmed hat. 

Bård almost said, "Gandalf?" but checked himself in time. One eye. "Odin."

"So he'd have us believe," Kai said, with weary amusement in his voice.

"I am Odin the All-father, master of the battle, weaver of poetry and magic, bearer of wisdom," he said in sonorous tones. "I greet the lios alfar, beloved of my brother Frey. Asgard has not forgotten your grace, your beauty, your learning, your millennia of proud tradition."

The camera pulled back. Odin was on a throne behind a great feasting table, with a wolf on each side of him and a raven on each shoulder. The backdrop was a tapestry depicting tall, golden, beautiful elves brandishing swords in the faces of great numbers of what could only be svartalfar. These were depicted as hunched and naked and dark blue, with yellow eyes, forked tongues, and fangs. "Tidings have come to me of the dark times that you face, of the onslaught of the svartalfar, of your being forced to skulk and tiptoe in the margins of the world you made for yourselves," Odin said. "And I entreat you, take heart. You have found a worthy champion in Lirikael Vinael. Throw your support behind him, and he will return you to your rightful places. Do not lose heart, most beloved of all my children, and do not forget yourselves. The gods go with you."

The video ended, and Kai turned to Bård, laughing gently. "Well, what do you think?"

Bård couldn't imagine going through life seeing yourself depicted like that. He certainly couldn't imagine laughing at it. "That tapestry..."

"As the webcomic says, welcome to the background radiation of my life."

"That alone makes me hate them and everything they stand for," Bård said, "but I kind of have to admire their audacity. Even American Republicans never actually tried to have God show up in one of their campaign ads. Hm. Go back?" Kai slid the progress bar back, and they watched a snippet again. "Oh. The hat hides his ears. I thought...I don't know what I was thinking."

"He's not an elf," Kai said. "They don't wrinkle up like that."

"Is he human, then? Or are there other choices?"

"Lots," Kai sighed. "Including, unfortunately, exactly what it says on the tin."

"Seriously? Gods? You're vouching for actual Nordic gods?"

"Not vouching for them, by any means," Kai said, "but my great-grandfather lost a leg from the knee down in the Victory of the Light, and he swore up and down that it was a blow from Thor's hammer Mjolnir. I don't have the time or frankly the interest to follow up--I mean, I spent ten years learning from people who made my life a living hell, and I think I've had enough--but the more I learn about the physics of magic, the more I'm convinced that what looks like divinity to the general magical population is just really expensive and time-consuming spells, practiced by people who have ample resources and leisure time."

"Vegard should see this," Bård said. "I bet he'd have some choice words."

"I'll e-mail it to him," Kai said, opening up a new message. "Same address as last time?"

Bård gave him the new one. "I don't know when we'll be able to check it, though," he cautioned. "They really are after us, and we have no idea what they can track or how."

Kai smiled slowly. "But I do," he said, "and I think I can help."

***

Chuck shepherded Vegard down the upstairs hall and into a room with carpets tacked to the walls. "You need magic to have been used on you before, so if you haven’t yet I’ll just--whoa, never mind. You’re primed. Most of it’s old, but it’s strong. Of course. King's Mead, among other things. What was I thinking? I’ll be back in awhile." He left Vegard in the doorway, and bowed out.

Where there were gaps in the carpeting, Vegard saw egg cartons. Maddy was seated at a PC--well, that was a surprise, but okay--with a Numark NV Serato DJ controller in front of her and some Adam A7X speakers on either side. She greeted him with a smile and a wave of her forkful of German chocolate cake. "Come on in," she said. "Glad you made it. Sit down. Relax." Vegard sat in an office chair. "No, really. Relax. Muscles loose. Breathe deep. Head back. There we go. No, don't close your eyes. You'll need them. Ready?" At his nod, she put down the cake and spun him around to face her gear, and used the MIDI keyboard to trigger an upward swell of sound, something rich and lush and electronic that made the visualization on the screen bend up in a generous curve before topping out. Maddy hit a button, and after the sound faded, the visualization stayed.

"Got that?"

"I guess so."

"Now, I’m going to use it as a carrier to give you a little nudge." She played the sound again, but this time, Vegard felt a prodding in his mind. "Got it?"

"Oi! Wow. Got it."

"Nudge back." She played the sound again. 

It took three tries before Vegard was able to nudge back, but Maddy was patient and encouraging, and when he got the hang of it, it was easy--like flexing a muscle he didn’t know he’d had. 

"Now," she said, handing him a microphone, "I’m going to play you the sound again, and this time I want you to sing--" She drew a finger across the screen, following the curve of the sound, a little bit below it. 

Vegard sang a note to see where he fell, adjusted, and gave her a nod. She played the sound, and he sang. With one deviation that he corrected quickly, he had it, and she praised him, but she made him do it seven more times, until he could do it perfectly without thinking too hard about it. They tried it with other sounds, afterward, until she was sure that he had the principle of the thing.

Then she tapped the original visualization with her finger, and said, "All right, this time when I play the sound and you sing, I want you to flex _into_ the space between your singing and the music."

"Okay," he said, and this took him a lot more tries. He was sobering up, and he wasn’t sure if that made things better or worse. When he finally did it to her satisfaction, she called a break. He was dripping with sweat now, and that little mental muscle he'd never known about was well stretched and feeling the burn.

She handed him a plate of German chocolate cake. "What did people do before this stuff came out?" he said around a mouthful, gesturing at the screen. The visualization had helped a lot; he didn’t know how he could have managed without it. Also, the cake was moist and rich, not the absolute best he’d ever had ever, but definitely a dice six.

"They’d train for months, sometimes years," she said. "There were horror stories of people working their whole lives and never quite getting it. Not sure if I believe those; I think I would move on to something I _could_ do after so much time, but then, the world we live in is a lot faster now. And there are still people, mostly old now, who think that what I’m doing with you is a terrible bit of cheating. But you’ve got it, and that’s the important thing."

After he’d finished his cake, she had him do the exercise over again, now without singing. He heard the sound, and had to keep the lower curve in his mind while he flexed into the space. Then she flipped it: she turned the sound off, and now he was singing the top curve, keeping the bottom curve in his mind, and flexing into the space. 

When she declared herself pleased with his performance, he said, plaintively, "I think I have to stop now."

She smiled at him. "I know. I’m a little surprised you didn’t call a halt an hour ago."

Three hours had gone by. His brain felt like jelly. All he’d done was sit and sing the odd note, but he was drenched and shaky and reeking of caraway. He returned the smile, sheepishly. "I was hoping I could get something accomplished."

"Vegard, you’ve been incredible! I’ve seen only one other person ever pick this up as quickly as you have, and he was seven. I thought you were a comedian who did the occasional song, but based on your performance today, I’d say you’re a musical genius." 

He shrugged and ducked his head. "But I have only today to learn. Tomorrow I have to go back to Oslo. It’s probably silly, but I thought I could use this to help keep my family safe."

"Even at this pace--which I don’t think you’d be able to sustain, frankly--you’re still probably a year or more from that calibre of magic. But this _is_ something you can take away with you. That flexing you’re doing...you could probably use it to unlock a door or light a candle."

"Oh, wowee," he muttered. 

"Now, don’t be like that. What you’ve done in an afternoon is amazing, and you should be proud."

He hung his head, but he nodded. 

She got up, and offered him an arm, which he took gratefully as he staggered to his feet. She kept hold of him as they went down the stairs, and he kept his other hand on the railing, because he suspected that even the slightest stumble right now would collapse him into a boneless heap.

Chuck came out of the kitchen, and Kai and Bård emerged from somewhere else on the ground floor. "There they are!" Chuck crowed. "How’d it go?"

"Hufflepuff?" Bård said. 

"Ravenclaw!" Maddy sang out. "He’s a clever boy, is your Vegard."

"I knew he’d get it," Kai said.

"Seriously?" Bård said. "He knows magic now?"

"He has the building blocks," Maddy said, depositing Vegard in a kitchen chair. "He’ll need to rest up before he puts anything together."

"Like, what kind of building blocks are we talking?" Chuck asked.

"Remember where you were by Christmas 2010?"

"In one afternoon? Dude! Nice!"

Kai pressed a phone into Vegard’s hand. "This is for you," he said. "It’s Chuck’s old phone. It’s previous generation, but it should still do the things you’ll want it to. You can put in your usual SIM card, but we glammed this one up super heavily, so it can’t be traced magically from this end, period. Bård and I got talking about security, and he’s got my old phone, which has the same treatment. The only thing is, you don’t want to start calling home or any number over and over with it, or anyone looking for you will put two and two together."

Vegard took the phone with thanks. He would have been happy to just sit for awhile, or to grab a shower, but the lenses would be ready now, and they were expected at their parents’ house in Fana for dinner.

Chuck and Maddy gave them bear hugs. And then, back in their respective disguises, Bård and Vegard and Kai headed back to the office.

On the way, with headphones, and Bård and Kai sitting next to him shielding the screen from prying eyes, Vegard watched the video. "It’s nonsense," he pronounced, when it was over. "Nonsense from start to finish. This is actually fooling people?"

"The election is something like eight months away, but Vinael is doing well in the polls," Kai sighed. "For the ones who solidly believe in the supremacy of the Bright Court, Odin is just confirming what they know already. And the ones on the fence...he’s appealing to a story they’ve been hearing their entire lives, that makes them the beleaguered heroes standing firm against insurmountable odds." He gave them a sheepish shrug. "I know how attractive that narrative is. In the last year or so of my PhD, something very like it, with the necessary adjustments of course, was the only reason I didn’t quit altogether and go slinking back to the tunnels."

"But there is no Odin," Vegard protested. "There’s no such thing as gods."

"That part doesn’t matter," Kai said. "They like what he’s telling them."

***

After nearly forty-eight hours of being shuttled from unfamiliar location to unfamiliar location, the house in Fana was the purest relief. Helga and Hans Terje Ylvisåker greeted their two eldest sons with warmth, if not a little confusion at their disguises and the short-notice visit without wives or children.

While Vegard showered, Bård helped set the kitchen table, and told his parents as much of the truth as he dared: they were trying out some new contact lenses, he said. A gift from a local businessman who was a fan. Yes, they were very comfortable.

He’d been apprehensive about the new lenses. His memory had been able to piece the information about Kai’s first glamour filter, the prototype that he’d given them, together with a bit of footage that Ulf, the cameraman from the _Norway’s Most Wonderful_ crew, had shown him years later. In the footage, they’d been interviewing a man with pointed ears, and he had attacked Vegard with a sword. The filter had turned everything a funny colour, and anything glamoured, while indeed visible, was exceptionally unpleasant to look at. But the technology had progressed to the point where the lenses Kai had given the brothers were utterly clear, and perfectly matched to their prescriptions. And when they’d looked at the world through them, both Felicity and Kai in his lios alfr glamour had delicately pointed ears. His parents didn’t need to know all that, though.

Dinner--fårikål with herbed skillet potatoes and a cucumber salad--was exquisite. He and his brother had eaten at some of the finest restaurants in the world, and attended impressively catered events, and Chuck had had wild kitchen skillz, but there was something about their mother’s cooking that fed the soul, too. 

Vegard took on the washing up while Bård grabbed his own shower. Then, with his parents’ blessing, he used their land line to call Maria. 

"I’m safe," he assured her. "I’m fine. We did what we needed to do. I’ll be home tomorrow."

"Thank goodness," she said.

"Look, in the meantime...you know that clone that they sent you?"

"Brynjar," she said unhappily. "I named him Brynjar."

He grinned at this. "I need you to send him out for an upgrade. Your contact is someone named Theona--"

"He’s not here, Bård. I...I think he’s dead."

" _What?_ "

"Helene and I sent them both to find _you_. She gave Finn--that’s what we named the other one, Finn--she gave him Vegard’s old cellphone. Which they just found in the wreckage of that studio explosion in Ullern. I feel really terrible about it...and I think it was supposed to be you."

"Oh," Bård said. "Oh. I bet you’re right, too. Oh. Oh god. Listen, Maria, I’ve got to go. This makes things more complicated. I might not be able to get home tomorrow exactly, but I’ll let you know as soon as we figure something out. I love you. My love to Sofie and Nora and Jens. I’ll call when I can, okay?"

He rang off, and found Vegard in the kitchen, just finishing loading the dishwasher and visiting with their mum. He waited until she left the room to make up their old beds to say, "The changelings are dead," he said.

"What?"

"Helene gave the Massive Cellphone of Doom to your clone. And they found it in the studio that blew up last night. What do we do now? We can’t go home. The Bright Court is willing to kill, and we’d be leading them right to our families. And now there’s no one to protect them."

Vegard sucked in a breath. "I have to call Helene."

Bård handed him the phone, and went upstairs to help make the beds. 

When he got back downstairs, Vegard was hanging up the phone, and his face was grim. "I told her we won’t be back tomorrow. I told her we might be out of touch for awhile."

"We can’t stay here, either."

Vegard was pacing, rubbing the side of his face energetically. "I know. We have to make things better, Bård. So that we can go home again."

"You heard Gisela," Bård said. "And you said it yourself: this isn’t a thing that the two of us can just fix."

"I’m not suggesting that we can solve everything for the svartalfar," Vegard shot back. "That’s a big problem, and it’s a problem for elves. I can’t believe I just said that. But being the Bright Court’s target, that’s a smaller problem, and it’s our problem."

"So what do we do about that? I don’t even know where to start."

"There’s no such thing as gods," Vegard said, coming to a sudden halt. 

"Wise words from our hero, Captain Nonsequitur! Remember, kids, vegetables are your friends. I have a balloon. What’s your favourite kind of cephalopod? There’s no such thing as gods. So?"

"So. Don’t you want to find out who is endorsing Lirikael Vinael?"

***

The important thing was that they couldn’t stay where they were. They didn't have much choice on a Sunday--all the transportation was dialled back, and they would have difficulty finding things open wherever they ended up--but they would have to lie low today, and leave as early as possible tomorrow. Whether they’d been tipped off or it just seemed like a logical place to search, the Bright Court was looking for them in Bergen. And they knew to check airports and train stations.

"That leaves the bus," Bård said on Sunday afternoon, as they unloaded the dishwasher together. "But you know what? If we buy our tickets from the driver, we won’t leave a paper trail."

"Perfect," said Vegard. He called into the living room, "Mum, can we borrow some of our old stuff?"

"You can _have it_ ," their father called back. "Take it away!"

"Check the closets," their mother said, with good humour. "Take whatever you like."

Bård despaired, at first, when he saw the empty closet rack in his room, but there was a box on the upper shelf, and in it a veritable trove. He found holey t-shirts, a pair of corduroys with the treads worn off (too small, but they would do in a pinch, and he did mean pinch), no fewer than four sweatshirts, two hoodies, five and a half pairs of boxer briefs, and assorted treasures. He left a little, but packed a lot in the stained nylon backpack. Then he replaced the box, said goodnight and goodbye to his parents, and fell into bed to catch a few hours of sleep.

***

When Bård slipped downstairs on Monday at ten to five in the morning, bag packed and contacts in, Vegard had just finished putting together an omelet, and added a few more eggs for his benefit. The earliest bus out of the station was 06.00 to Stavanger, which was as good a destination as any until they could get their bearings. They ate, called a taxi, and left a note for their parents, with the leftover raw omelet in the fridge.

Bård told the taxi driver, "We’re going to the b--"

"The Bryggen Promenade," Vegard cut in. : _The bus station is a fifteen-minute walk. And I don’t want anyone to be able to trace us to it_ :

The driver cautioned, "Nothing will be open this time of the morning."

"We know," Bård said. "But we’ve got an early train, so this is our only chance this visit, and we just want to wander through on our way to the station."

The night was chilly, and mist hung over the water. Bryggen's Hanseatic buildings, neat and colourful in daylight, now looked like multiple rows of jagged teeth. Bård hugged himself a little. "Toss me my pack?" Vegard obliged, and Bård pulled out one of his old sweaters, taking his hoodie off long enough to put it on. "Oh, and hey." Bård reached into the pack again, and pulled out a small blocky thing, which he handed to Vegard. 

Vegard opened the plastic case, and pulled out a black cassette, a wide grin on his face. "Sleez Beez. Where did you find _this_?"

"It was in my box of stuff."

" _Your_ box of stuff. You were seven years old when this came out!"

"So? You were ten. And we were both in Africa."

"I think maybe this is Calle’s, actually." Vegard handed it back to him, and sang into the stillness, " _We need a hero!_ " 

Bård sang back, " _Hold on and don't let go!_ "

" _Some kind of hero..._ "

" _I know!_ " Bård shouted.

" _We know!_ "

Triumphantly, they chorused, " _If you want it, come and get it! Heroes die young..._ " They trailed off, grimacing at each other. 

"That’s something I remember," Bård said. "We decided not to be heroes."

"No," Vegard agreed.

They passed a fountain with cobblestone sides and a statue of a toddler peeking out of the petals of a flower in the centre. Vegard slowed, staring, and stopped. He turned and went back to the fountain. Bård suddenly snorted with laughter. "Hey, snag any bologna from home?"

Vegard raised an eyebrow. "I don’t like bologna. You know that." His eyes grew large. "Right. I...there’s something in that fountain. Something that wanted stolen meat."

" _Stolen_ meat."

"Yeah. No way to get around that part." Vegard put down his pack and went to the side, and peered into the dark water. "Hello?" he called softly. "I don’t know if you can hear me..."

Two bulging, milky eyes broke the surface of the water.

Vegard gasped, and backpedalled. He motioned for Bård to approach. "Do you see that? Do you see those?"

Bård stayed where he was. "They don’t inspire comfort, Vegard."

"But he helped me. Once..."

Bård pulled out his phone, and did a quick search on "legendary Norwegian water creatures." Probably that was not a kraken. "Nøkken? Fossegrimmen?"

"Fossegrimm--"

"That’s the indefinite, I think," Bård said, scrolling through the entry he'd found. He looked up in time to see Vegard’s legs disappear into the water. 

Bård lunged forward, and was just in time to grab an ankle. The Sleez Beez tape had been in that hand; he’d let it go, and now he tossed his phone on the ground so he could get a grip with both hands. The fountain wasn’t that deep, but he was in up to his shoulders, and Vegard was stretched out full length, and below them was...whatever it was. Little blue sparks appeared impossibly deep in the water, illuminating shapes he couldn’t make sense of. 

All at once, the downward pull stopped, and Bård was able to haul Vegard up and over the edge, gasping and choking. Vegard sprawled on the paving stones for a moment, shuddering, getting his breath back while water streamed from his hair and clothes. Then he seemed to notice Bård’s phone, and picked it up and handed it back to him. With a pained look, he pulled his own phone out of his pocket, but when he thumbed it, his face lit up. "Waterproof," he said, wheezing a little. He got shakily to his feet--Bård helped pull him up--and reeled a safe distance away from the fountain before panting, "Thanks. That...I don’t know what that was, but that wasn’t the fossegrimmen. I was trying to use magic at it, but all I could do were, like, little flashes. I think I just made it mad. But then it let me go anyway."

Bård walked him to a bench and sat him down, and then checked his phone again, scrolling down and then back up again, comparing entries. "Maybe whatever was there before was a fossegrimm, but it looks like what’s there now is a nøkk." He started to laugh, then, and had to sink down to the bench himself and put his head in his arms. When he looked up, Vegard was staring at him with the funny bewildered half-smile that he got when he wasn't sure what the joke was. "To get rid of a nøkk you're supposed to throw metal in the water," Bård explained, shoulders still shaking. "The Sleez Beez just saved your life."

Vegard burst into laughter too, although his ended in a fit of coughing, and he was still shivering. His teeth were starting to chatter. Bård pulled him to his feet, and they walked. 

They reached the bus station just as the Stavanger bus was pulling out. "We can catch it!" Vegard cried, breaking into a run made awkward by his wet jeans. 

Bård caught his arm and pulled him back. "We'll catch the next bus. We're not particularly attached to Stavanger, are we?"

Instead, they entered the bus station and changed in the men's room--Vegard completely, Bård out of his wet t-shirt and sweater and hoodie. Vegard took out his contacts, rinsed them, rinsed his eyes, and put the lenses back in. Then, with an aggrieved sigh, he slicked his wet hair back, and applied some gel from his pack. Bård did understand: he'd gotten negative feedback about that hairstyle last spring, and while they didn't actually owe it to the world to be pretty, it wasn't like they didn't feel the pressure. But the curls were a dead giveaway, and if he hid them under a hat again they'd take forever to dry, and probably end up frizzy. 

The next bus out was the 06.35 to Sogndal. By that time, the change of clothes and hot drinks had warmed them up, even if they weren't completely dry. They sat together on the bus, with copies of _Aftenposten_ , _Bergens Tidende_ , _Dagbladet_ , and _Dagsavisen_ spread across their laps, and their wet clothes spread out on the backs of the seats in front of them. Every so often they poked their heads up to see if anyone looked unduly interested, but there weren't a lot of riders, and everyone seemed to be minding their own business. 

"No human remains," Bård said, scanning the _Dagsavisen_ article about the explosion in Ullern. 

"Right," Vegard said, with a pointed look. "No _human_ remains."

"How weird could they have been, though?"

"It was a studio," Vegard pointed out. "If what they found wasn’t human, they might have thought they were mannequins or something."

"Maybe. What a bummer, though. It would have been nice to at least meet them."

"It would have been nice to be going home now, knowing that they could protect everyone." Vegard sat back. "I wonder if... Melantha said they had free will. I wonder if they were people. I wonder if they understood what was happening. I wonder if it hurt."

"I hope not," Bård said quietly. 

After a long silence, Vegard said, stroking his upper lip thoughtfully, "What about Kristiansand?"

Bård closed his eyes. "We would have been better to catch the Stavanger bus then. Why, what’s there?"

"The university. Even if we can’t use the books, we could probably ask someone." Vegard's face fell. "And then people notice us, and ask questions, and know exactly where we're going. Right."

Bård thumbed his phone to a map of the country, to see if anything leapt out at him. "What about Trondheim? Aruviel wanted us to kill svartalfar, so we know there's svartalfar there."

Vegard seemed to think this over. "Ulf!" he said suddenly. "You told me Ulf moved there."

"And he has the footage from 2007!" Bård exclaimed, remembering halfway through to check his rising voice. The _Norway’s Most Wonderful_ cameraman had contacted Bård a few years ago, wanting to know what to do with the unused footage. Some of it had apparently used Kai's glamour filter, but the rest was no less weird, and sometimes disturbing. Bård hadn’t remembered any of it, and he'd told Ulf to just do what he would with the footage. Maybe he'd still have it. 

"It might help us fill in some missing bits," Vegard said. He withdrew a sheaf of bus timetables from the pocket of his suit jacket--which he was wearing with faded blue jeans and his ugliest sweater--and started scanning them. "Mm. We'd have a five-hour layover in Sogndal, but then we could catch the bus to Førde, and get a Trondheim bus from there." 

Bård leaned over and examined the timetable. "Oh. I was going to suggest stopping for the night in Førde, but there’s only the one trip, isn’t there?"

"Yeah."

"Then Trondheim, here we come."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing (for magic lessons): Marcus James' "Move," featuring Frankie Sex - https://soundcloud.com/marcusjames/marcus-james-move-feat-frankie


	7. Danse i en Ring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Booktown / A bit of a jaunt / Toxicity / Good intentions

The layover in Sogndal was long enough that they decided to do something with it. Vegard had used his phone to find a car rental place a short walk from the bus station, and although he was loath to give them his information, the brothers talked it over and decided that there was no way anyone could plot their route from a car rented for a few hours, in a community that they weren’t planning to stay in, that wasn’t on the way to anything else. They bought sandwiches at the terminal and drove out to Fjærland, which was famous for its collection of secondhand bookstores. 

Unhappily, Booktown proper was a seasonal affair, and wouldn't open until May, but the café owner who told them this kept staring at them, and when Bård casually took off his glasses and cleaned them, she said, "You know, since you boys have taken the trouble to come out here, I'll just ask Fredrik if he wouldn't mind letting you take a look at what's in storage."

Vegard shot his brother a reproachful look. : _Not okay, Bård._ :

: _No, _: Bård agreed.__

They ended up dropping close to a thousand kroner on books: the Eddas (both poetic and prose), three books of Norwegian folklore, an outdated travel guide to Norway, an English-language coffee table book about the Avro Arrow, and a collection of Øyvind Rimbereid's poetry for themselves, and then some things for the kids because they felt that their purchases should justify Fredrik's effort. They also autographed a t-shirt for the café owner's granddaughter, posed for photos, and recorded two sets of greetings on two different camera phones, although they begged the owners not to say or do anything with those until at least a week had passed. Vegard fixed a hinge that was making the storage room door sag, and then he fixed the toilet in the café's staff washroom, and then he felt okay about what they'd done. 

There was no way that they'd be able to fit all of the books on the bus with them, and their cover had been blown the moment they rented the car, so they stopped at the combination Joker store and post office, and shipped everything recreational to the office at Concorde, with a little note explaining that they’d be out of the office for a bit. While they were there, they bought a neck pillow for Bård to use on the bus, a fleece blanket, some granola bars and Pepsi Max, and the most ingenious little survival kit. They also grabbed cash, just in case the Bright Court could use their cards to track them electronically. Then it was back to Sogndal, to return the car and catch the bus to Førde, where they had just enough time for a reasonably leisurely dinner. 

Bård slept most of the way to Trondheim, apparently happy with his new neck pillow, but for Vegard the trip was a special kind of hell. He drifted in and out of a half-sleep, too hungry to doze off properly but too exhausted to grab a granola bar; cold in just his suit jacket and sweater but too hot if he grabbed a corner of the fleece blanket. His boots were uncomfortable, but when he took them off his feet froze. Whenever a car passed going the opposite direction, the headlights would stir him to wakefulness, as would the sound of anyone passing by in the aisle. Once, the bus took a turn and his still-wet jeans fell off the back of the seat and into his lap, and the string of profanity he let loose was enough to make someone a few seats ahead shush him. 

Then, suddenly, he felt his rage damped down, as if someone had thrown a blanket over it, and a delicious lassitude stole over him. He glanced towards his brother, and saw that Bård was watching him through half-lidded eyes, a sleepy smile on his face. Vegard flashed him a wave of gratitude, and settled back in his seat. He followed the lifeline Bård had tossed him, all the way down into sleep. 

***

The bus was early into Trondheim, and so at 06.40 the brothers disembarked onto the concrete pad with their bags, still blinking and yawning. They shuffled through the station, paid a visit to the men’s room, and then exited onto the street.

They couldn’t check into a hotel without leaving an electronic trail, but the restaurant of the Hotel Nidelven--to Bård's dismay, it had been bought out by Scandic--was close to the station and boasted the best breakfast in the city. Over mugs of hot chocolate, bacon and eggs and fruit, and a chocolate croissant for Vegard, they looked up other options, and made a list of hostels and B&Bs that seemed likely to take cash. 

It was too early to contact Ulf, or to try to check in at any of their list of possibles. They weren’t used to having this much unstructured time and nothing to do with it. In the end they took turns reading the Eddas out loud to each other, occasionally breaking into laughter as sleep deprivation made them stumble, tongue-tangled, over odd bits of diction. 

At 09.30, Bård phoned the number he had for Ulf. It wasn’t in service. He called the TVNorge switchboard--and let them know, incidentally, that he and his brother were on "a bit of a jaunt" as he called it, so not to be alarmed if no one could get in touch--and asked for the new number. TVNorge didn’t have it, but the operator knew someone who knew Ulf, and they waited patiently while he texted the someone and then read the new number off to them. Bård thanked him, and rang off. 

Next, they debated the merits of informing the folks at Concorde of their absence. Calls to TVNorge and then Concorde and then one of their old colleagues might get their number flagged as suspicious, and endanger anyone they talked to, and eventually they decided that it might be better to wait. The package and note would arrive at Concorde in a few days anyway. 

So, straight to Ulf it was. Bård dialled, and this time it rang and was answered. "Hi, is this Ulf?"

"I can’t help you!"

"What? Ulf, it’s Bård and Vegard, from _Norway’s Most Wonderful_."

"Yeah, I know. I... Look, you guys are in some bad trouble here." 

"We know. We're trying to get out of it."

There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line. "What do you need?"

"You remember all that useless footage you showed me five years ago? We were wondering if you hung onto it."

"I did," Ulf said. "Why?"

"We need to look at it."

"Why?"

Bård said, slowly, groping for words, "There’s...there might be something on it... Something a little bit weird is happening to us, and we’re thinking we might find some clues there."

There was a long hesitation on the other end of the line, and then Ulf said, "Meet me at Golem at 17.00."

"Golem," Bård echoed. "Sverres Gate, right?"

"I’ll find you," Ulf said, and rang off.

***

16.50 found the brothers standing at the corner of Sverres Gate and Erling Skakkes Gate. Bård was pacing back and forth at the top of the T junction, stopping every so often to look around in bewilderment. Vegard was checking Google Maps on his phone, twin furrows between his eyebrows.

They had found a nice little bed and breakfast, third from the bottom on their list and just outside of the city centre, that had taken cash and not wanted to see a credit card. Or rather, they had wanted, but when Bård had said, _sotto voce_ , that they wanted to be discreet, the owner had agreed to forgo it with a knowing smile. Bård wasn’t sure if she’d recognized them or thought they were a closeted couple, but at this point he didn’t care. She had let them check in and shower, and Vegard had grabbed an hour’s nap while Bård changed into fresh clothing and did a load of laundry at the nearest laundromat. Now Bård was wearing the plaid, Vegard had the hoodie with the hood up, and they were both wearing their suit trousers. They wanted to be undercover, but not totally unrecognizeable to Ulf.

"They must have moved the street," Bård said in disbelief. "Who does that?"

"They wouldn’t do that," Vegard said. "If they did, there would be a sign." Something seemed to occur to him, and he slipped his phone into his pocket and pulled out his contacts case. 

"Right," Bård said, and put his own lenses in. 

Now, where they had seen only a parking lot, there was a street in front of them. And Ulf was walking down it, towards them. Bård waved frantically, and broke into a run. "Ulf!"

The cameraman, a little greyer and more rotund but still the same Ulf, shook Bård’s hand heartily, and then Vegard’s. "Oh, come on," Vegard said, and hugged him. And then, of course, Bård had to have a hug too or it would be weird. 

"It occurred to me," Ulf said, "that you’d said Sverres Gate, not Sverres Gate Nord, so when I didn’t see you and I didn’t see you, I thought I’d just better come out here and have a look. But you seemed to see me all right..."

"Uh, yeah," Vegard said. "We forgot to, that is we..."

"Forgot to put in the antiglam lenses? I know. I do that. The first week I had them, I was on my eighth time around the fountain when I’m like, Wait, I don’t have to do this anymore."

"This...is kind of a surprise," Vegard said, as Ulf led them to Golem. It was instantly familiar. The sign showed a great hulking creature with a piece of paper on its forehead bearing not one of the Hebrew names of God, but a latte. 

"What’s a surprise?"

"We go to visit our very human cameraman, and he invites us to a magical coffee shop and tells us about his spell-resistant lenses."

Ulf laughed as they got into the line. "Well, two springs after the show ended, I got a call from Perrin Indrael. He told me the glamcams were coming onto the market, and he knew I knew the elves and I knew my way around a camera, and those two things together made me a very attractive prospect at that moment. We came to terms, and I relocated up here. Large Americano with two cream and two sugar, and two large hot chocolates, please. One with soy. Now, now, guys, I’m getting this. Never regretted it."

It was warm enough that the patio was open, but they went inside. Sitting down made Bård feel younger and exhilarated and frightened all at once. "What happened here?"

"This is where you first met Aruviel," Ulf said, a little gently. "He tried to kill Vegard. Well, probably he wasn’t _trying_ to kill Vegard, but he was certainly trying to goad you into using the sword he’d just tossed you out of the blue."

"I really, really hate that man," Bård said.

"We all do. So what’s the deal with you guys, though? Last time I talked to you, Bård, you didn’t remember anything, not even the stuff that I remembered. I wasn’t even sure you would now."

"We’re trying to piece it back together," Vegard told him. "Something came up that makes it suddenly important."

"Want to share?"

"Someone...some friends who turned out to be elves asked us for a favour," Bård said. "And we couldn’t help, but we seem to have attracted some unwanted attention. They almost got us in the airport, and we seem to have lost them so far, but I think it’s safe to assume they're still looking for us."

"We can’t go home," Vegard said, running his fingers along his upper lip. "It would lead them straight to our families. We were hoping that finding out more about what we did in 2007 would help us."

"I have the footage," Ulf said, handing them a USB key, "and you can ask me whatever, if you think it’ll help. I won’t pretend I know everything, but I had to learn for myself not too long ago, and I remember what helped and who knew their stuff."

"It’s kind of weird," Bård cautioned. 

"Gentlemen, this morning I filmed a PSA about the dangers of using blood sacrifice to reverse petrification. Kind of weird is Tuesday."

"We’re looking for Asgard," Vegard said, taking his hand away from his mouth.

"Oh."

"We’ve heard that Odin is there," Bård explained. "We want to ask him some questions."

"Ohhhhhh," Ulf said, as if this clarified everything. "You filming?"

"Just...curious, for now," Bård said.

"I don’t actually believe in gods," Vegard said.

"No, I didn’t think you did." Ulf said. "I don’t either. I did when you knew me, but..." He gave them an expressive shrug.

"Then it might interest you to know that Odin himself is endorsing a Bright Court politician called Lirikael Vinael," Bård said.

Ulf rolled his eyes. "Jeez. Of all the... I would say, I don’t know what he thinks theatrics like that are going to get him, but then, I’m not an elf. And I probably wasn’t going to vote for him anyway."

"Probably?" Vegard echoed. 

"I like his stance on crime, and his immigration policy. I guess it wouldn’t have shown up in your news, but an ifrit took out three people in Kristiansund last fall. Dangerous times, boys. We can’t all just hold hands and sing ‘Danse i en Ring.’"

Bård cocked his head curiously at this. He’d heard that before somewhere. 

Vegard said, "He hates svartalfar."

Ulf laughed, gently. "Some of them probably think so, but it’s because he expects them to succeed or fail on their own merits, instead of having the laws favour them. The thing you have to understand about the svartalfar, boys--and some of my best friends are svartalfar, and they’ll tell you the same thing--is that, I mean, they are great people, every bit as good as regular folks, but because of what happened to them in the past, they’ve got this really toxic culture that says, oh, it’s pointless to try, it’s pointless to work hard, it’s pointless to measure up to anyone’s standards because of all this stuff that happened in the past. So even though they’re equal now, a lot of them are still not bothering with an education, they’re dabbling in dark magic because it’s easy and quick and lucrative, they’re staying in the tunnels and having like a dozen kids, and then they want to know why they’re not doing as well. I mean, it’ll come, but the culture has to change. We’ve done our bit; now they just have to do theirs."

"Hm," said Bård.

"I mean, you remember that kid we met at NUA? The one who gave us the first glamour filter?"

"Kai Fjelltop," Vegard said. 

"Yeah! Nice kid, very articulate, but kind of angry, ears full of rings...he gives us this filter that turns everything a funny colour and that it hurts to look through, and he expects to get his doctorate for that?"

"It was the fact that it could be done at all that was the breakthrough," Vegard said.

"I’m sure he improved upon it," Bård added mildly.

"He never got the chance. The patent for the glamour filters I use is held by Skinner Gjennom Industri. Their president is a lios alfr who probably isn’t half as smart as Kai was, but he knows how to get around. He speaks well, dresses sharp, and has a good attitude, and it pays off."

"But-" Vegard began, and Bård gave him a mental kick and a warning look. He was pretty sure that Vegard wouldn’t spill anything about Kai, but they also couldn’t afford to get into it with Ulf. 

"Ah," Bård said noncommittally. "Anyhow, we just want to know where Vinael is getting Odin from. If there are gods in the world, that seems like a useful thing to know about."

"Well, there aren’t," Ulf said with a chuckle. "But if you’re bound and determined to look, the person you’d talk to would be a völvá."

"A völvá," Bård echoed. 

"A seeress. They’re kind of rare these days, but you can still find them around. One did consulting work on a project I did three years ago. I can give you her info." He pulled out his phone and started thumbing through his contacts. "Jeez...where is it?"

While he looked, they talked about safe harmless things: their families, mutual contacts at TVNorge, how much Oslo had changed, how much Trondheim had changed, that sort of thing. Apparently, the last time he’d talked to Nico and Knut, they’d found it hilarious that they kept turning up in Ylvis fanfic. "Oh god," Bård said, "not--?"

Ulf burst into laughter. "Not that I’ve ever seen." He shook his head at his phone. "I don’t understand..." He thumbed through a few other things, and then said, "That’s why. It’s in a note." He copied it down on a napkin, and, reading upside down, Bård soon saw why it wasn’t listed in his contacts. "Follow these directions to get to her. I’m sorry, I know it’s terrible."

"We’ll do what we have to do," Vegard said grimly, pocketing the napkin.

Ulf leaned forward. "You’ve never cared about gods, and you haven’t even cared about elves since that summer. You have sweet careers. Families. Why are you guys _really_ doing this?"

"You were right," Vegard said with a shrug. "We really are in terrible trouble. And this is the only way we can think of to get out of it."

"Well...good luck," Ulf said. "Listen, I have to get going. I’ve got a dinner date, and you two look like you could use about a week of sleep. But it was really good to see you. I don’t know if what I gave you will help you, but I hope so."

***

Ulf waited until he was well out of sight of Golem, and then he went to the nearest public telephone and dialled the number he’d seen on the bulletins. "Listen," he said, "they just came and talked to me, and I know where they’re going. But before I tell you, you’ve gotta understand, they’re nice kids. Well, men. Now. I guess. They wouldn’t blow up anything, and whatever they are doing, they looked scared out of their minds and they are just...totally misunderstanding what you guys are really about. The only reason I’m doing this at all is that they’re going to get themselves hurt if they keep messing around with this stuff. So promise me that whatever happens, they won’t be hurt. ...Okay, thanks. They’re headed for Korgfjell..." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rearranged some of the chapter breaks to adjust the flow further on, and realized just recently that it's made this chapter a bit weak and lackadaisical. Mercifully, it's also short. Apologies, and the next one will be more fun. 
> 
> Suggested musical pairing: Yes' cover of "No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_NrBG0FUWA


	8. Going to Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brahms' Lullaby / In His Majesty's High-Visibility Service / Dvorak and sorcery / Bad boys

On the bus, the best they would be able to do from Trondheim was Mosjøen, and Vegard was all for catching the overnight coach, but Bård reminded him that they’d already paid for a room that they might as well use, and that they both owed themselves a good night’s sleep. Besides, going to see the völvá in Korgfjell was going to take some preparation. 

They’d grabbed kebabs for dinner, and now they were back in their clean but shabby little room, in their twin beds. The only light in the room was the chalky glow of LED streetlights slanting through the windows. Bård had his eyes closed, and he was lying on his side. Vegard thought he might be asleep already, but then he demanded, wearily, "Vegard, what are you doing?" 

"Practicing," Vegard said. "Look."

Bård opened one eye. 

Vegard sat up and threw his legs over the side of the bed. He closed the padlock that had been with his stuff in Bergen, hummed softly, and flexed, asking the atoms of the lock if they wouldn’t mind rather vibrating _this_ way. It sprang open with a loud and satisfying click.

"Way cool!" Bård exclaimed, pushing himself up on one elbow. "What are you humming when you do that?"

"It’s a song called ‘Open Up,’ Vegard said with a sheepish grin. "The tune doesn’t technically make a difference, just the space that you create for things to happen, because you’re setting up a sort of resonance between the sound you’re making and the sound you’re thinking. There’s this little flexing thing that happens, that I find a little bit difficult still, and at the same thing you have to concentrate on _what_ you want done, and an appropriate song makes that part a little easier for me."

"And you just learned this just now?"

"I spent most of Sunday night practicing in my room. Look what else." He put down the lock, rolled onto his back, and whistled a bit of the chorus of Collective Soul's "Shine," making a little spinning motion with his hand. Where his eyes were focused, a little ball of blue light, about the size of a pea, appeared in the air. Vegard turned his head to see Bård's reaction. 

"Awesome," Bård breathed. There were occasional moments, even these days, when Bård still looked like a kid, and with his cheek pressed to the pillow and his eyes reflecting the light, now was one of those times. But even as his brother spoke, Vegard became aware of his control wavering, of the room darkening again as the ball collapsed into nothing. He let out a growl of frustration.

"Don't be so hard on yourself," Bård said, reverting instantly back to a grownup. "This time last week, you felt guilty about getting parking tickets. Now you're the target of a nationwide manhunt who thinks nothing of breaking the laws of physics." 

"I'm not _breaking_ the laws of physics," Vegard countered, suddenly marinating in exhaustion. He closed his eyes. "I'm just following...different physics...like..."

"Go to sleep, Vegard."

"No, but you see, you know how quantum...um..."

Before he could get any further, Bård started singing Brahms' Lullaby:

" _Lullaby_  
_And good night_  
_You're so bloody pedantic_  
_Close your eyes_  
_Close your mouth_  
_Don't make me sit on you."_  


Vegard chuckled, and took the high part: 

" _Not a threat,_  
_Little bro,_  
_You're so spindly and thin_  
_You can't boss_  
_Me around_  
_But it's cute when you tr--_ " The last syllable was cut off by a tremendous yawn. 

"Stubborn," Bård murmured, rolling over.

"No I'm not," Vegard said with a smile. And then he was asleep.

***

Mosjøen was an industrial town at the mouth of the River Vafsna. The bus deposited them at a station that was little more than a shelter. All of the hotels wanted credit card information, but they'd seen a fairly centrally located campground on the way in, and after backtracking for half an hour on foot, they were able to get a cabin. They sprang for two rooms this time.

They dropped off their bags, and immediately left again. Both were still weary from the trip, but the safety equipment store was on the south end of town. There was a Pizzabakeren on the way, and they grabbed a slice each and two for later. 

On the bus, they'd talked about how to do this. They purchased yellow hardhats and LED headlamps, bright yellow safety jackets with reflective silver trim, and a reflective caution sign, suitable for clipping to a bumper. 

Now came the hard part. They detoured through the town centre, scanning vehicles. Whenever they saw a slightly battered truck parked, they waited by it, for its owner to return, and then asked to rent it for the evening. They had some things to move, they would take turns saying in their most earnest voices. And it had to be tonight, and they'd planned it very poorly so that they'd had to resort to this. Even at the price they were offering, it took four tries. They ended up renting from an elderly woman, with Vegard doing the talking. Of course.

They made one more stop, at a grocery store. As they drove back to the campground--the shocks on the truck were dreadful, and it had a tendency to pull to the side--Bård said, "Did you really just give her the last of your cash?"

"Cash, yes, but we're neither of us hurting, are we?"

"No," Bård admitted. "And I’ve still got some for tonight. This is just expensive."

"We'll have to detour somewhere to get more," Vegard said, wrestling with the steering wheel as he came to a turn, "so no one can track us. You're right, though."

"Most celebrities just get a Mercedes or take up cocaine," Bård sighed. 

"And we wound up with elves. Never let it be said that we follow the crowd."

"How did we _do_ this in 2007?"

"TVNorge paid for travel and accommodations. And I don't think we were running from anyone, so we didn't have to go all James Bond."

"Right, James Bond," Bård laughed, his gesture taking in the low bleak little town and the cantankerous pickup truck. " _From Nordland With Love_."

***

04.00 found them on the road to Korgen, and to Korgfjelltunnelen. The tunnel had been built in 2005, a solution to the rash of winter accidents on the mountain road above, which had been built by the Germans in WWII and which had a bad habit of trapping trucks on the upward slope. Vegard felt his stomach tighten as he drove the pickup truck, marked with the caution sign on the bumper, into the tunnel mouth. They were really doing this.

The tunnel was quite well lit for the first few hundred metres before the side lights stopped and the only illumination was the truck’s headlights and a narrow band of lights in the ceiling, like beads on a string. Every little bit there was a brightly lit niche where a vehicle could pull off, little oases of light in the dark. They counted these niches. At the seventh, they pulled over and climbed out. The tunnel was virtually deserted; in all the time they’d been driving they’d passed one lorry going in the other direction. Still, they were very careful as they moved to the access door they’d been told about. 

" _Open up...make room for me_ ," Vegard sang softly, adding the little trill to the R à la Johnny Rotten, and the lock sprang open. He resisted the urge to glance nervously around. If there were cameras, it was best to stroll in like they belonged there. 

The access corridor was lit gently, and doors led off to various rooms, some more finished than others. Vegard peeked in windows of each and saw a break room, an office, a first aid room. The corridor forked, leading to a security room. He wracked his brain for a moment, and realized that the same song would do just fine. " _Burn, Hollywood, burn!_ " Every screen went to static. 

And, in the wall opposite the security room--"Make sure you’ve got your lenses in," Ulf had said--there was another door, this one unlocked. He and Bård went through. 

This tunnel was rougher than the others, and unlit. They turned on their headlamps, and shed their jackets and jeans and put them in the black fabric shopping bag they carried, and took Finland hoods out of the same bag. Now they were all in black. If they doused their lights, they should be invisible. 

Finding the place took a lot longer than the half hour Ulf had said, but then Ulf had been with people who had evidently been to see her before. After an hour and a half, Bård said, "That’s it; we’re lost. We have to go back, or we could wander down here until we starve."

"No, no, no. We're not lost, I'm sure we're not. I've been counting junctions. We're supposed to take the fourth, and there've been three. We're just going slowly."

"You missed a turn, then!"

"Maybe," Vegard admitted. "Turn off your lamp for a minute." They switched off their lamps together, and after a few seconds of adjusting to the darkness, Vegard noticed an almost imperceptible glow in his peripheral vision. It went away when he tried to look at it straight on. "Do you see that?"

"No," said Bård, his voice wavering a little. "It would be really nice if we could turn the lights back on, though."

They did. But Vegard stood in the tunnel for another long moment, reaching out the way Maddy had taught him to reach out--not flexing, but feeling for currents. They were there, ahead, coming from the same direction as the barely visible light.

Another ten minutes of walking brought them to the corridor they were supposed to take. They made a sharp left, and found themselves in a hollowed-out chamber with flickering torches on the walls. A very fat bald man sat in a golden throne at the opposite end of the room. Heaped around him were furred hides and piles of precious stones. A large golden birdcage hung from the ceiling above his head. Vegard was shocked to see a young naked woman inside, regarding them dispassionately.

"Hello," said the man, sounding bored. He had an awful lot of rings on his fingers, and six different amulets around his neck. "What can we do for you today?"

"We’re here to see, the, um, völvá?" Bård said.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"Not really," Bård said. "We have gifts, though. Chocolate. And tangerines. And cash. We don’t know...if she takes...cash."

"Cash is fine," said the woman in the birdcage, sounding a lot less innocent and fragile than she looked. "Not that I’m turning my nose up at chocolate and tangerines, mind. Simen, give us twenty minutes."

The man on the throne got to his feet a lot more nimbly than Vegard had expected, and exited through a passage behind the throne with a little salute, a proper salute which Vegard found himself returning automatically. 

The völvá did something inside the birdcage, and with a rattle of chains and pulleys, the cage lowered and approached them until she was eye to eye with them. She was sitting on brocade cushions in there, and had a laptop perched on a shelf at eye level. The keyboard on her lap was a Dvorak, and Vegard was impressed to see that she was running Linux. "Why don’t you have a seat?" she offered, motioning them to the throne, which proved to be wide enough for both of them to sit down. The cage spun so that she was facing them.

"I thought you’d be older," Vegard said.

"I can be, if you want to wait."

"That’s all right."

"You’ve got a nice setup," Bård said. "I must admit, I totally misread what was going on here."

She grinned. "That’s the point. It’s a good screening tool, and it gets Simen out of his studio for a few hours a day so his bloody parents will stop bugging him, and it makes me laugh. Plus, the throne’s inherited, and if you sit in it long enough, you find there’s absolutely no lower back support. Simen’s okay because he’s got cushioning. At least he says he is. So, what can I do for you?"

"We think the Bright Court is trying to kill us," Bård told her. "We need a way of convincing them to leave us alone so that we can go back to our families."

The seeress sighed. "Yeah, well, good luck with that." With a quirk of her mouth, she turned her eyes away from them, and appeared to think something over. "Mmm. Nope. Nope. They're into you good. Get some protection, is all I can say, and even that might not work. Although... getting dirt on them might."

The brothers exchanged a look. "If we needed to find Odin," Vegard said, "how would we go about it?"

Her eyes widened. "You want to go to Asgard?"

"If that’s where he is," Bård said. 

"There’s no such person, gentlemen. Didn’t the church teach you anything?"

"We’re not church people," Vegard said tightly.

"Asatruar?" she said, suddenly wary. The cage pulled back a bit. 

"No."

"If there ever were gods--and my grandmother swears there weren’t, and my great-great grandmother swears there were, and my great-grandmother says there were and good riddance--the last of them died in World War II. But Asgard never went anywhere. It might be a little shabby now, I don’t know if anyone is keeping it up, but you can still get there. And see for yourself that it’s empty. Unless it’s not, in which case gods help us all. Figuratively speaking--I don’t think they’ll actually help us."

She gave them directions, which both of them dutifully entered on their phones. "I think this is in Sweden," Vegard observed. 

"It’s the realm of the gods," the völvá said with a show of infinite patience. "It’s nowhere and everywhere."

"But we get to it from Sweden."

"Just so."

They gave her the chocolate and tangerines, and because she asked for it, the copy of _Plane & Pilot_ that Vegard had bought at Trondheim Station to read on the bus. "I’ve never been in an airplane," she sighed. "It’s not safe for Underjordiske to fly. The skies are watched."

"It’s very lovely," Vegard said. "I fly. I mean, I’m a pilot. With a commercial license. It’s really beautiful, but really dangerous too. If you had any idea how dangerous it was you probably wouldn’t even want to. See, there’s these air currents--"

"We have to be going now," Bård said rapidly. 

"But I just wanted to tell her about--"

"The peril, I know." Bård flashed a smile at the völvá, who was looking at them quizzically. "It’s very perilous."

Vegard’s temper flared, but he counted to ten and kept his face carefully neutral. The two men respectfully thanked her and said their goodbyes, and exited the chamber.

It was only outside, in the dimness, that he grumped, "You could have at least let me finish my sentence. If she understood how dangerous it is, she wouldn’t wish she could."

"Funny," Bård said, "I kind of gathered that’s what she was trying to tell us about Odin."

***

Now it was simply a matter of exiting the way they’d come in. They left the chamber and retraced their steps. Bård didn’t mind driving in tunnels that much, but creeping around like this unnerved him. He kept thinking he heard stealthy movement behind them. Of course it was only the echoes of their passage, but eventually he couldn’t bear it anymore, and had to say something. "Vegard?"

"Yeah?" Vegard was still sulking. 

"Is something in here with us?"

Vegard snorted. "What are you--?" His eyes suddenly widened. "Bård!" he whispered. 

A moment later, something tackled Bård, and he went down. 

Beside him, he saw that Vegard was on the ground too. And something was crouched on his chest...

Above them, in a harsh unfamiliar dialect, a voice said, "Whatcha doin’ in the tunnels, brighty?

"Not elves," Bård gasped out. Hands with long fingernails had hold of his hair. He felt his head wrenched to the side, and his neck protested, making him yelp.

"Human!" the voice above him said, but it was nearly drowned out by Vegard’s roar. Blue light flared with a snap, and there were three cries from their assailants. "Mage!"

Vegard had struggled up from the tunnel floor, his face transformed by fury and a long scratch on one cheek. One of them was on his back, a sharp-toothed pointy-eared glowing-eyed figure, and Vegard took care of this by ramming himself back first into the tunnel wall. The attacker let go with a strangled cry. Vegard faced off against the two others, eyes wild, chest heaving. 

Light flared ahead of them, blue and steady. A female voice echoed through the tunnels. "Oddvar? Ole? Lisa?" Their shadows, long and sharp and inky black, shrank as the light approached. 

The assailants froze. So did Vegard. Bård pushed himself up to get a better look at what was going on.

The girl was a young teen, a svartalfr. A blue ball of light, of the sort Vegard had shown him in Trondheim but bigger and more stable, hung in the air in front of her. It showed the three who had attacked them much more clearly than the wildly bobbing headlamps had. And Bård was surprised and ashamed to see children, two of them cowering against the wall of the tunnel, one nursing a bloody nose. The oldest was about twelve. The one with the bloody nose was a girl even younger than the lightbearer. "Th-they jumped us," he stammered out. "We didn’t mean..."

Vegard, too, looked aghast. "I’m so sorry."

The lightbearer pulled out two handkerchiefs. She handed one to the younger girl, and one to Vegard, whose eyes widened in surprise. He stammered his thanks, and dabbed at the blood on his cheek. 

"We thought they were brighties," the oldest of their assailants said, in that odd dialect. "They’re humans."

"It doesn’t matter who they were," the lightbearer said fiercely. "You don’t _do_ that to people!" She turned to Bård and Vegard. "I’m sorry my sibs did that. You’re not...I mean, that is, there’s no need to...?"

"We’re just really sorry," Vegard said, hands fluttering helplessly. "Bård’s got a bad neck, and they, I don’t think they meant to, but...I lost my temper. I didn’t know they were _kids_."

"We’ll be mincemeat when we get home," the younger girl said helpfully, pressing the handkerchief to her nose.

"Did I break it?" Vegard asked.

"Nuh-uh. That’s from before."

"I’m very sorry," said the lightbearer, approaching Bård, helping him to his feet. "Do you need anything?"

Bård rubbed his neck. "It’s fine, it’s fine," he said. "It just acts up sometimes. No harm done."

"We thought they were brighties," the older one said again.

The lightbearer sighed, and took the hands of the two youngest ones. "Come along," she said. "Mama’s going to hear all about this." Over her shoulder, she said, "I’m so sorry again. But...this is not a safe place for humans. You shouldn’t be here."

"Are they gonna shoot us with a gun?" asked the girl with the bloody nose. 

"No!" Vegard squawked. 

"No," echoed the lightbearer, gently. "Come along now." She shepherded her young charges down the tunnel, and then they took a turn and were gone. 

Vegard and Bård stayed where they were until the sounds were gone. Then they started to walk again. "That," Bård said, "was messed up."

"I hurt a little girl," Vegard said, nearly in tears.

"They attacked us," Bård reminded him. "We didn’t know how old they were."

"They were scared, Bård. From what I’ve been piecing together, the tunnels are the only place the svartalfar are safe from the Bright Court. If the Bright Court decided they wanted the tunnels too, there would be no safe place at all."

"But we’re not Bright Court, Vegard."

"No. We’re humans. And wonderful ambassadors we were, today."

"We were attacked!"

"They were scared."

Their phones showed 08.00 when they reached Korgfjelltunnelen’s access corridor. Vegard opened the door, and closed it again in a hurry. "There’s someone in there," he reported. "An older man. Eating a muffin. In the break room." They put on their jeans and safety jackets again. Vegard took a deep breath, and pushed the door open again, and he and Bård stepped into the corridor.

"Morning," Bård called, raising a hand in greeting as they passed the break room.

The employee looked startled, but he raised his hand too. "Morning." He looked like he might want to say something more, but without hurrying, Bård and Vegard left before he could say it.

The truck was still parked out front, to their immense relief. That was the part of the plan they had been most worried about, the possibility of having to rescue an impounded vehicle for its irate owner. But it was there, and fine. They’d actually pulled this off. 

As they opened the doors, two figures seemed to melt out of the shadows, and when he saw them Bård could have kicked himself for not seeing them before. Lios alfar, in what looked like light blue army fatigues with a little shield on the right breast. "Dálki," Vegard whispered.

"Humans," one of them said jovially. "Well met on this fine winter morning."

"Well met indeed," Bård said, sticking out his hand. But instead of shaking it, the dálki officer fastened a handcuff around his wrist, and then spun him, expertly, to cuff the other wrist behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Camille Saint-Saëns' "Danse Macabre" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyknBTm_YyM


	9. The Peace Division

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Songbird / The Ylvisåkers' Dilemma / Procedural / A long walk / To honour and defend / Ylvis hit the wall / Counterintuitive Survival Strategies #4: Sognish / A gift / Waxing apocalyptic / The nefarious doings of criminal masterminds

Bård expected to be led away, now, but instead there was a sharp sideways shove, and now he was in a plain white room with a round wooden table and three very uncomfortable-looking folding chairs. The round table was different, and he supposed that the dálki had other ways of watching him than through a two-way mirror, but it was nevertheless quite plain that this was an interrogation room. Something was wrong with it, though, something that made an animal part of his brain fundamentally unsettled, and after a moment he realized what it was: no door. 

He swallowed back his shock, and calmly sat down at the table. The dálki officer who had greeted him was there. She gave him an approving look, and sat down with him. Vegard and the other officer were gone, but after a few seconds, another dálki officer appeared, just appeared, with no flash of light or pop of displaced air. He carried a file folder with him, and as he sat down at the table, he flipped it open in front of him in a smooth motion that Bård bet he’d spent a whole night practicing. The officer spun the folder around, and shoved it towards Bård. "We know. Everything."

"Okay," said Bård. "So why am I here, then?"

"We’re just waiting for the Peace Division. They’re on their way over from Trondheim, and they don’t want to waste the magic on a small-time thug like you."

"I see. Does the Peace Division know everything too?"

"You can bet they do." 

"Then why am I here?"

"Conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. Conspiracy to sow discord. Destruction of property. Attempted murder. Shall I go on?"

"Please do," said Bård. "All of this is news to me."

"Look," said the other officer, "we know your brother is the brains of the operation. If you tell us, just tell us, we can let the Peace Division know you’re being co-operative."

Bård laughed with real delight. "So...you think I’m a terrorist, and Vegard is, like, my terrorist boss?"

"Have you got another version of events you’d like us to know?" the first officer said eagerly.

"Because," said the officer who had most recently entered, "when I left the other room, your brother was singing like a pretty little songbird--"

"He does that," said Bård. "If I were you I would have stayed and enjoyed it; he’s got a ridiculously good voice."

"I mean, he was talking," the officer said, sounding disgusted. "He was telling us _his_ version of events. And in it, the whole thing was your idea."

Bård laughed again--more gently this time, because his neck still hurt. "If Vegard is telling you a different story from what I do--which I doubt very much--then I advise you to believe him. My brother is honest to a fault. Long-winded, though, and the truck’s a rental. If you could arrange for someone to take it back to the address in my pocket, that would be best."

The officers exchanged a look.

***

Vegard hadn’t been able to pay much attention to the physical features of the pocket world the other dálki officer had shoved him into. He was suddenly surrounded by magic, weaving the space around him, zipping around and shoring it up, so strong that it was an assault against even his regular senses. He tucked his feet in, under the cuffs, to bring his arms around to the front of him again, so that he could bury his head in his arms.

The legs of his chair were kicked, roughly. "Sit up, scum!"

"Please don’t do that," Vegard said, quietly.

"Or what? I’ll be sorry?"

"I think you might, you know."

"If you don’t sit up right now, you’re the one who’s gonna be sorry."

Vegard raised his head.

"Oh Frey, someone get him a--"

Vegard snatched his hardhat off his head, and threw up into that. Then he tried to set it on the table so that it wouldn’t topple and spill its contents, but someone took it away first. He slumped back in his chair and closed his eyes against the rich shimmering chaos.

"You’re Vegard, right? Vegard Urheim Ylvisåker?"

"Yeah."

"So, what would you like to tell us, Vegard Urheim Ylvisåker?"

He realized that they were trying to use his true name to intimidate him. It wasn’t going to work. Probably someone who had grown up with it would worry more, but he just couldn’t muster it. "It was an accident. Well I mean, I did it on purpose, but I didn’t know how young they were. They surprised us, and it was dark, and they hurt Bård and I just wanted them to leave us alone..."

"What are you _talking_ about?" a second dálki officer said. 

"In the tunnels? The kids?" He opened his eyes long enough to see the two bewildered elven faces peering back at him, and then had to close them again. 

"Kids? In the tunnels?"

"I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. And, and I know that doesn’t make me any less guilty, but I just want you to know. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t know."

"Again, this is about kids in the tunnel, or...?" one of them said. 

"Yeah, the kids." He cracked an eye at them again. "Who else would I be talking about?’

"Svartalfar," one of them murmured to the other.

"Tell us what happened on Friday night," one of them said. 

"We took the train to Bergen," he said. "Bård and I."

"Why Bergen?"

"To pick up contact lenses," Vegard said. "And we visited our parents for a couple of days."

"Which train was that?"

"The 23.25."

"Okay. And what were you doing before that?"

"We had dinner. Indian food. Shopped for clothes."

"And before that?"

"We were going to fly to Bergen. Changed our minds."

"What made you change your mind?"

"There were weird people there. Made us nervous."

There was a rush of magic, and then one of them was gone. Vegard slumped forward with a moan. This was like getting sick on one of those really loud blinky obnoxious amusement park rides, only this ride never ever stopped.

"Does magic make you sick?" the remaining officer asked, a little incredulously.

"I didn’t think so. But the room..." 

"Hmm. I’ve heard of that."

"Why d’you want to know about Friday?"

"Something happened," the officer said shortly.

"What?"

"We were hoping you could tell us."

"Is that the studio that blew up?"

"Yes."

"Was anyone hurt?"

"Why do you care?" the office demanded.

Vegard risked a look again. "How could I not?"

"None of your people were hurt. None of ours, either, that we can tell, but they could have been. Is there anything you want to tell us about it?"

"We think, Bård and I think, that whoever did it, they did it because they thought we were going to be there. An old friend had asked us for a favour--"

"Melantha Aruviel?"

"Yes. An innocuous favour, so please don’t bother her, but it would have wanted a studio. And we said no. Then we went to Bergen, and the next night we read about the studio blowing up."

The other elf was back now, and Vegard dry-heaved twice, giving them time to get a wastebasket in front of him before the not-so-dry heaving began anew. 

When he was done, and was pressing his forehead to the cool of the table in front of him and making a gargantuan effort to ignore the fact that the table was humming gently, the newly returned officer said, "So, you maintain you had nothing to do with the explosion."

"Not _nothing_. We were the targets. We’re pretty sure."

"Because your brother already told us everything."

"Oh, okay," Vegard said, with some relief. "He'll set you straight better than I can."

"According to him, you’re the brains of the operation."

"We have different strengths. He’s better socially. And physically. I’m better musically and, like, scientifically. I’m good at details. We’re both very smart. But it was kind of him to say."

"Allow us a moment," said the one who had stayed while the other had left. 

They both disappeared, and Vegard needed the wastebasket again.

***

In the tunnel, next to where the pickup truck had been before they’d asked a junior officer to drive it back, the four officers conferred. "I think the Peace Division are out of their minds," said Officer Tiriael.

Officer Quiriniel said, "The older brother's story checks out with reports of their card activity, and with the Aruviel girl's story. There’s no way they blew up that studio."

"That’s not for us to decide," Officer Mosegroddstein countered. "It’s our job to hold them until they’re taken off our hands."

"It’s really not." Riddari Feridael had been in the column for seventy-five years now, and the whispers around the miðstöð were that she didn’t understand how much the world had changed in the last decade, now that the svartalfar were in ascendance. "If we don’t think they did anything, we have to let them go."

"But the Peace Division--"

"Wants them for something it sounds like we all agree they didn’t do."

"What does your gut say, Officer Mosegroddstein?" the riddari demanded.

"Do you think the Peace Division will accept my guts as evidence? Because they will have them, I’m sure."

Officer Quiriniel said, "Simple. We Seal their statements. And they’ll accept that."

The dálki officers looked at each other. They nodded, and disappeared.

***

Fifteen minutes later, Bård said, "There. I’m done." The Seal of Luotettavuus flared and sank into the paper of his statement. He was quite proud of himself. He’d answered all their questions absolutely truthfully--they'd gone to see the völvà to find out how to get the Bright Court to leave them alone, and the best answer seemed to be an appeal to the gods--and he was pretty sure he hadn’t given them cause to bother any of their friends or family, nor had he let their future plans slip.

Riddari Feridael uncuffed him and said, "You’re free to go. Stay out of trouble." Bård stood, and suddenly the world was cold and dark. He was back in the little niche in the tunnel. The fabric bag was sitting on the ground. The truck was gone. He was alone. 

Vegard appeared a few seconds later, drenched in sweat and chalky pale. He staggered over to the tunnel wall, sank down against it, and closed his eyes. 

"What happened?" Bård asked, standing over him. Something awful occurred to him. "Did they torture you?"

Vegard laughed, softly. "Not on purpose. The room they put me in was just...really, _really_ disturbing."

"I see that they took my advice," Bård said, a little bitterly. "I said they should take the truck back for us. And they did."

Vegard opened his eyes and let out a groan that ended in a mock sob. Then he pulled himself to his feet. "Better start now."

"Are you sure you’re okay?"

His brother had already started walking, and was out of the niche, onto the little strip of raised white concrete between the road and the wall, running his fingers along the wall. "I’m not going to get any more okay if I sit here breathing gasoline fumes," he retorted. 

They swapped stories as they walked. They were long stories, but it was okay, because it was a very long walk.

***

The Peace Division arrived that afternoon. Ljón Guriel Abatrael strode in as if the dálki miðstöð were his own personal suite. He threw his arms wide and shouted, almost gaily, "Where are my prisoners?"

"If you mean the Ylvisåkers," Riddari Feridael said, "we released them a few hours ago. But--"

"You _what?_ "

"They’re no good for the studio explosion. We’ve got their Sealed testimony here. And the dark one has receipts from shopping and dinner in the city centre; there’s no way they had time to get to Ullern and back."

"That’s no alibi; the glyph could have had an activation time. Or a remote key."

"Sealed testimony, Ljón. In fact, they think they were the targets of the explosion."

"Of course they do," Abatrael snapped. "Most terrorists have a persecution complex."

"Usually not about the things they’ve done themselves."

Abatrael sighed heavily, and put an arm around her. "I guess you wouldn’t see much of the type in Mosjøen, Riddari, but we’re not talking about small-time crooks here. They have the ear of the human Prime Minister, and they’ve got friends in the highest echelons of the Samkoma. The dark one is some kind of prodigy, and the svartalfar snapped him up as one of their own. He might even be able to beat a Seal. You’re not to blame for falling for it, of course, but you should have done as we told you."

The other dálki had been listening in, and now Tiriael said, "Did you know that your prodigy gets glamour-sick?"

"Look. Riddari. Grethe. Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker have the power to bring the humans down right onto our heads. And then the humans will seize their chance and wipe us out. Do you want that? _Do you want that?_ "

"I’m still confused," Quiriniel said, with a show of hesitation. "Do you want them brought in for what you suspect they might have done, what you think they can do, or what they might do in your darkest nightmares?"

" _I want them brought in, period!_ All around you, people, there is a secret, silent war going on. Civilization versus barbarism, creation versus destruction, I know it’s old-fashioned but I’ll say it, plain old good versus evil." He fixed an eye on the riddari. "And _you_ , my dear, have to decide which side you’re on."

"We took an oath to honour and defend, Ljón Abatrael," the riddari said, "and that oath supersedes any claim your division has on us. We can’t uphold it if we’re treating our own people like enemy combatants."

"Take a look around," Abatrael sneered, and the three dálki obediently looked around the quiet office, where most of the other dálki had paused in their own workaday tasks to watch the fireworks in the centre of the room, and then looked back at Abatrael, eyebrows raised. "Metaphorically, I mean! Your ‘own people,’ as you call them, are already _behaving_ like enemy combatants."

"We took an oath," the riddari said, with finality.

Acting on Abatrael’s orders, the dálki dutifully made an immediate sweep of all the hotels in Korgen and Mosjøen, including the campground, but no one was registered under the name Ylvisåker, their cards had not been used, and no one recognized their photos.

***

By the time Bård and Vegard got back to Mosjøen, it was nearly 19.00. It was dark, and they were glad for their safety jackets--not just for the warmth they offered, but because without them they'd have been invisible to motorists after sundown. After exiting the tunnel, they’d tried several times to call a taxi, but reception in the mountains was lousy, and although a couple of calls had gone through, they kept breaking up.

They ate at one of the hotels along the E6. Everything was watery and overdone, but they really didn’t care. Nor did they care about paying with Vegard's debit card, or grabbing cash from the ATM in the lobby. The dálki knew they were here. Besides, they couldn’t not eat. They’d just walked forty kilometres. 

Getting up from the table was even more painful than the meal itself. "We’re not going anywhere tonight," Bård pronounced, rubbing his neck. 

"No," Vegard agreed. The two and a half kilometres back to the cabin felt longer than any of the rest of it. When they got to the campground, they paid for another night, went into their respective rooms, undressed, and fell straight into bed.

***

When Bård awoke, it was still dark out, but Vegard was up and dressed and disguised and showered and packed. "Eat," he said, gesturing to a slice of lukewarm pizza and a big bowl of berries.

While Bård ate, Vegard worked on his neck with miniscule, firm, precise movements. As he had on the train to Bergen, he eased the worst of the kinks. "Just so long as you don’t expect me to rub your calves," Bård said around a mouthful.

"No, no, no. I can ignore my calves a lot better than you can ignore your neck."

"So. Sweden."

"Let's try for Bodø. I got a visit from an old friend last night."

"Oh?"

"The nightmare. She let me talk to Emma." Bård hazarded a glance up and saw Vegard staring off into the distance with a silly smile on his face. Then he saw Bård looking, and collected himself. "But before that she had a warning for me. It’s not the local dálki so much that we need to worry about as something called the Peace Division. They’re looking for us. We need to get out of here. There's a train in about an hour."

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Bård demanded as he pulled on clothing--wildly mismatched, but it would be a half-hour walk to the station at the best of times, and his thighs were insisting very loudly that this was not the best of times.

"No," Vegard admitted. "But remember, they already know we've been here."

"And if we buy a train ticket, they'll know where we're going, too."

The walk started out feeling very bad, but the need to hurry let Bård put aside the pain, and about five minutes in, he realized that his muscles had not precisely forgiven him, but were at least behaving. 

They made it to the train station with twenty minutes to spare. There was quite a crowd waiting, too--a collection of farmers and teens and one improbable milkmaid--and an idling bus bound for Sandnessjøen. The brothers slowed, stopped. Vegard hoisted his packs--he was carrying both again--and started forward. "Not too long, or they'll notice," he said through his teeth. Then he whistled the first few notes of "I Can See Clearly Now," and the scene changed, the lines in front of him reordering themselves like soap poured into oily water. There were two teens and the milkmaid. The rest were all elves dressed in midnight blue body armour. 

Vegard handed Bård his pack. "I'm sorry to make you carry this," he said. "Walk to the bus. Get on. Buy a ticket to Sandnessjøen. I'll be there soon."

"What are you--?"

"I'll wait. We just shouldn't look like we're together."

Bård went to the bus, paying no mind to the elves, not even glancing their way. He asked for his ticket in Sognish, just in case. And then he waited, trying not to look as anxious as he felt. The interior lights were on in the bus, so he couldn't see what was going on outside. For all he knew, Vegard could have been taken already. But he'd felt no burst of alarm from the link...

The hydraulics chuffed, and the driver closed the door. Bård sat bolt upright in his seat, but before he could do any more, there was a frantic pounding on the side of the bus. The driver opened the door, and let in Vegard, who thanked the driver, bought his ticket, met Bård's eyes for only a moment, and then settled down in a seat near the front. Right. There weren't that many people on the bus. For them to come separately and sit together, especially with the interior lights on and everything visible to the world, would look suspicious. 

Bård slept most of the way to Sandnessjøen. He awoke with Vegard tugging at his arm. "Hey, buddy," Vegard said in Oslo dialect, "sorry to disturb you, but if you're catching the ferry, you're gonna have to run."

"Thanks," Bård said, grabbing his pack. Bloody hell, he hadn't used the neck pillow, and if there had ever been a time for it...

"You look rough, man. Do you need help carrying that?"

"Yeah, actually," he said in Sognish. "I'd be really grateful."

Now they had a reason to exit the bus together. Bård ached all over, but Vegard pulled him into a run. They were at a quay, with the sky lightening in the east and an express boat at the dock. 

They bought their tickets with cash. On the boat, they dropped the pretense of not knowing each other. Ignoring the breathtaking coastline, they found the nearest set of toilets and changed in the accessible stall. Now Vegard had black jogging pants, a sweater under a tattered dark blue hoodie drawn tight around his face, and the John Lennon glasses, and Bård had the plaid flannel and ball cap and oversized green pants.

Vegard took a moment to peek through the crack in the door and scan the room before turning back to his brother. "It goes to Bodø."

"I figured," Bård said, rubbing his neck. "Sorry, could you work your magic?"

Vegard hesitated for a moment, but then he said, "Yeah." 

But instead of digging a thumb or a knuckle or a fingertip into just the right spot, he rested his his fingertips lightly on Bård's neck, and sang a bit of something...relaxing. Bård gasped as warmth and relief cascaded from the crown of his head to the base of his shoulderblades, and all the kinks melted away. "Oh my god... "

"Did I hurt you?" Vegard demanded anxiously.

"No, no. I hadn't meant your _literal_ magic, but that was the best thing ev--well, second best thing. Third. That was...if I count all the kids as one thing, that was the _fourth_ best thing ever."

"Let's save it for if it gets really bad," Vegard said, his voice suddenly cracking with fatigue. "It's kind of...difficult."

"Are you sure about Bodø?" Bård asked. "They'll be looking for us there." 

"Not really," Vegard admitted. "We'll have to be very careful. Probably disembark separately."

"And go somewhere else as soon as we can," Bård said. He pulled out his phone and did a quick check, careful to hold it in a way that didn't undo all of Vegard's good work. "Fauske? A bus goes there, and it puts us closer. And then I'm sorry, but I think we should stop and spend a couple of nights. I think we need to."

"Yeah," Vegard agreed wearily. "We need a plan if we're going to look for Asgard. And we need some good food. Vegetables. I haven't pooped in two days."

"I’ll look for cabins," Bård said. "Let’s go back out on deck. We’re stuck here; we might as well enjoy the view."

***

It was Friday. Tomorrow it would be a solid week since the last call had come. There had been nothing more from Vegard. Finn and Brynjar were dead. Helene was beginning to wonder if she’d dreamed their visit, as a way of dealing with the trauma of her husband's disappearance. Except...Emma was out of bed and brushing her teeth, and Helene could hear her singing the changelings’ lullaby.

A few minutes later, Emma came downstairs, dressed for school, and joined them at the table. "I dreamed about Papa last night," she said.

"I miss him too," Helene said. "But I’m sure that he’s thinking of us."

"He is," Emma said, starting on her porridge. "The horse lady let me talk to him. He and Uncle Bård were in Mosjøen last night, but they’re going somewhere else today. They’re all right, but they’re doing something super secret, and if they use their phones, the people they’re trying to keep the secret from will find out. But he said to say that he loves all of us and he misses all of us, and he’ll be home as soon as he can. And he said to give you all these." She put down her spoon, got up, and kissed the tops of her brothers' heads. Then she threw her arms around her mother, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

"Oh, sweetie," Helene whispered, swallowing back tears.

"And he said to prove it’s him I should tell you there's a gift for you in the back of his sock drawer. It was going to be for your anniversary, but right now it's an I'm-sorry-all-of-this-is-happening gift." 

Helene eyed her little girl curiously, and then said, "Let's go find it. Mads, can you watch your little brother for a moment?"

The gift was right where Emma said it would be, a sapphire-blue velvet box folded in tissue paper that had not been disturbed by little hands. 

She didn't look at the contents. She didn't need to. He'd found a way to get a message to her; that was the only gift she wanted.

***

"Outsmarted us at the station," Ljón Abatrael reported to the Chosen One over lunch and drinks at a Bright Court club in an unassuming two-storey building in Ekeberg. "You're right. The dark one is more dangerous than we could ever have believed. And, forgive me Lirikael, but I think that you're seriously underestimating his brother."

"Hm?" Vinael said, chasing the last stalk of asparagus around his plate with a fork of solid silver. 

"He did most of the talking to the dálki."

"I suppose that follows," the junior magister mused. "I can't imagine the dark one being able to control himself, to do much more than spew bile."

Abatrael chuckled as he sipped from a wine glass that held, in fact, white grape juice. He wasn’t about to drink on duty, but he did like to feel like he was. "Truer than you know." And then he was all business again. "Thirty-two of my best people, and fourteen of Mosjøen's dálki, searched all the accommodations in Mosjøen and Korgen, and covered every possible egress from both towns with a field of the strongest glamour disruptors on the market for the next sixteen hours, and they still managed to get out of town."

"What are you saying? That they've got something stronger?"

"They must."

"Or they went right back into the tunnels and are being sheltered by the svartalfar. What did you find out about their activities?"

"The fair one says they came to town to visit a vølvà by Korgen. Well, that’s what he told the dálki, and it squares with the tip we got. But of the two operating in the area, the human one is gone--there’s some very large warlord in her throne now, and I doubt he even knows what it means--and the svartalfr one is in the middle of Nedrekorgen, and canvassing the city has turned up not even a whisper of the brothers. _But_ they made financial transactions in Mosjøen the evening after the first sweep, so they were still in the area."

"The svarts are lying, obviously," Vinael said, attacking his smoked duck breast as if it had answers.

"The dálki didn’t think so."

"The same ones who didn’t think the Ylvisåkers were even worth holding."

Abatrael made a noncommittal noise. "It might have been a mistake, to make Ullern the pretext for holding them. The brothers turned out to be squeaky-clean for that. Surprisingly," he added dryly. "Anyhow, the Korgen dálki have no experience with the Ylvisåkers, but this is their territory."

"It’s treason, what they did," Vinael said heavily. "When I’m First Magister, there’s going to be a reckoning. People are going to be called to account for their actions."

"If there’s still an electoral system at the end of the year," Abatrael snorted. "Everywhere I look I see Ragnarok. It’s coming to a head. If the svartalfar don’t overrun us, the humans will blast everything into oblivion."

"That’s not Ragnarok!" Vinael exclaimed. "At least there’s a renewal after Ragnarok. What the humans would do, that’s...just...evil." He took a couple of deep breaths. "I hope you’re wrong. Syl is pregnant. I hope you’re wrong."

"My congratulations," Abatrael said, raising his glass. "If I thought there was no hope, I wouldn’t back you. I wouldn’t even be doing this job. But gods and serpents, Lirikael, people don’t make it easy."

"Your loyalty is a gift, Guriel, and I hope to be worthy of it," Vinael said. " _Please_ find the brothers. Everything depends on it."

"You’ve encountered them before. Are they more likely to have gone to ground in the tunnels or slipped through our net?"

"Check the tunnels," Vinael said. "Don’t be afraid to bust some heads; the svarts will grumble, but if they understood what’s at stake they’d know it’s to protect them too. Not because of anything my experience says about Ylvis, just...the idea of them being able to beat a glamour disruptor is too terrible to contemplate. If they can do that, they can be anything, anywhere."

***

At that moment, the brothers were in a tiny two-bedroom holiday cottage just outside of Fauske. It was chilly and smelled like mice, but Vegard was working on the fire while Bård put together a mutton and lentil stew. They’d gone shopping at the Co-op and picked up enough food for a weekend, since they’d decided to stay put for Saturday, and Sunday would be useless as a travel day. That gave them the weekend to recharge and research and strategize before they set off for Asgard. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Afro Celt Sound System's "Seed" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A53577mJXXE


	10. Fraxinus Excelsior

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Found in IKEA / Solsikke / Wandering wide / A serendipitous detour / Liar / The Dark Lord of Concorde

Maureen still didn't believe in love at first sight. The thing was, every so often an exception had to be made, and Celia was exceptional in every way. They'd met at the orientation session, and although Maureen had never entertained even the thought of being attracted to a woman, she had immediately been aware that Celia had the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen on anyone, male or female. The two of them had hit it off straightaway, and then instead of going their separate ways afterward, they'd grabbed coffee. And then dinner. And even then, they'd parted only reluctantly. It had taken one night for Maureen to fall helplessly, hopelessly in love, and a week to admit it to herself, and a month for her to admit it to Celia...who, it turned out, felt the same, although Maureen couldn't fathom why. And now, now they were moving in together. All during the time that the store was closed for repairs and the blast investigation, they'd pored over the catalogue, and while they'd found some living room ensembles that one could live with for the sake of the other, once they got to the showroom on Monday they both agreed on IKEA's new Fraxinus Excelsior collection. 

They found the pieces--with a manager's help--near the back corner of the warehouse. "Oh," the manager said, eyeing the leaning, sagging, splintered stack of flat-packed boxes. "That'll have been the explosion last week. I'm so sorry. We just reopened today, and as thorough as we've tried to be, we're still finding places where debris came flying through. The loading bay doors were mostly open that night, and the blast slammed all of them on this side of the building shut, so we're still getting surprises in places we didn't think to look. It's okay; the ones on the top shelf should be in better shape. I'll get someone with a forklift to get them down for you."

While the women waited, Celia poked at an amber puddle on one of the top boxes. "Wet," she said, wrinkling her nose, and tried to wipe it off on the box top. It clung, smelling strongly of sap and ozone. 

Maureen looked up to see where it had come from, and clapped her hands to her mouth. Was that...?

The forklift chose that moment to come trundling around the corner, and Celia pulled her gently to the side and tried to wave the manager over. By the time she got it explained, though, the forks were positioned under the pallets on the top shelf, and Maureen shoved a fist in her mouth to stifle a shriek.

The boxes on the top shelf had been splintered too, and were even sappier. And as the forklift brought them down, the weight of the two bodies impaled on ash slats shifted the load until it tipped, spilling them and the top boxes the last eight or so feet to the ground.

Now the forklift driver, a wiry middle-aged white man, started to scream, and the manager went very pale and said, "Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god..."

The bodies on the floor stirred. The taller, blond one groaned and then sat up, and helped the one with dark curly hair to sit up as well. Clutching at each other and at the shelves, they struggled to their feet.

The forklift driver had fallen silent. "Thanks for getting us out of there," the blond one said, giving him a little pat on the arm. "Sorry for the mess." The driver mewled a little. 

"Yes, thank you," the dark-haired one said. "That was a very unpleasant week and change." Swaying dangerously, leaning on each other, the two of them shuffled to the emergency exit, and opened the door. The alarm started to sound. It took a bit of manoeuvring to get themselves out, what with the slats still sticking through their torsos, but they managed to slip out before anyone else could come running.

"What the hell was that?" Celia demanded.

The manager said, "I...think that was Ylvis. They do that. Sometimes."

"I-I...I..." the forklift driver said.

Maureen took her fist out of her mouth and said, "I thought they'd be funnier."

They got the furniture for free.

***

On the other side of the railway tracks was a stand of birch trees. The changelings found a place among them where the ground dipped a little, and collapsed.

"Very thirsty," Finn said.

"In a little while, we should look for our bags," Brynjar said. "I had some water left."

"In a little while." Finn looked over at Brynjar, who had propped himself up in a sitting position using the four-foot slat in his chest. "That can't be comfortable."

"I was hanging upside down," Brynjar reminded him. "This is a relief."

Finn staggered to his feet with a growl at nothing in particular. "Get ready for an even bigger relief," he said. "Sit up."

Brynjar grimaced and leaned forward, and clutched at the trees around him as Finn grabbed hold of the slat, planted a foot in the small of his back, and pulled with all his strength. At first it wouldn’t budge, and then there was a dragging and a sucking, and it was out. Brynjar sagged against a couple of saplings, keening thinly. 

He gave himself two minutes, for the lattice to form in the hole and restore his structural integrity; and then after a bit of sizing up, he had Finn sit just so against a tree, lined up his own foot carefully with the trunk and Finn’s shoulders, and pulled from the front. It took longer, even with Finn adding his own diminished strength, but eventually the slat came free. Finn drew his knees up. Mid-whimper, he looked up at Brynjar, and frowned. "You've got a little, um..." He made a brushing motion at his temple.

Brynjar reached up, and felt his own temple. One of the crosspieces from a Hjärna coffee table was sticking out of it. He sighed, and got as good a grip as he could.

"Might want to sit down to do that," Finn said.

He knelt, and pulled, and collapsed in a heap. 

"Brynjar?" Finn said in a small voice.

Apparently, it would have been better to cut the stick at both ends, and just leave it in. The left side of his body was suddenly very weak, and the vision in that eye was gone. Brynjar rolled onto his back, and tried to say that he'd done a bit of damage obviously, but it was going to heal up and he would be fine. It wouldn't come, though, in a way that scared him, and he groped for words until his frustration boiled over. Fortunately, the part of his brain that handled profanity was still apparently intact, even if the words were a little slurred. "Sunflower!" he shouted with half of his mouth, in equal measures of rage and triumph. "Pretty sunflower! Lots of small fish!"

"Brynjar?"

"Picnic basket. Sunflower. Sunflower!"

***

It was good to be on the road again. Friday and Saturday had been a relief. The brothers had traded off tasks, one reciting the Eddas while the other one cooked, or chopped wood, or did the washing up. On Saturday, during the afternoon they got out of the cabin, in separate directions (although both of them were still too footsore from Thursday to go very far). For dinner that night Vegard made a pecan, mushroom, spinach, and cheese casserole that they ate with a bulgur salad and the rest of the mutton, and it had been thoroughly exquisite.

Sunday had been hell. A warm spell meant rain, which kept them indoors and made the cabin stuffy and close and even mousier. They’d both recovered enough now that the separation from their families and the enforced inactivity put them in dire moods, and they spent most of the day in their own rooms, Bård playing video games, Vegard checking timetables and maps. Bård knew this because at dinner Vegard had presented his findings at enough length that Bård finally said to him, in the gentlest voice possible, with a sickly smile on his face, "I really appreciate your work, but I need you to not talk for a little while."

Vegard had acceded to this, and done the dishes in an unhappy silence. Bård had been trying all weekend not to pay attention, but in the back of his mind he could feel his brother reasoning himself out of anger, awash in currents of hurt and empathy and good sense and fatigue and frustration.

"Vegard?"

A silence. And then, "Yeah?"

"If I could have picked a travelling companion to be trapped in a cabin with, on the run from killer elves, it would have been you."

Vegard had kept his head down, but the corners of his mouth had lifted a little. "Likewise."

Now they were walking to the Fauske bus station with a fresh round of new purchases from Intersport: sleeping bags, a three-man tent, some strong light cord, a solar charger, a small stove and some fuel, two light cooking pans, hiking boots for Bård, a first aid kit, sleeping mats, ten days of dehydrated food, and a good map of the area they needed to cover. The village of Sulitjelma was only forty-five minutes away by bus, and according to everything they’d found online, the mountain range they needed to visit was a four-day hike, nearly all of it over existing trails that weren't too demanding and didn't require any special climbing equipment or experience. Bård hadn’t said, but knew they were both thinking, that Sunday would have been better spent hiking, but they couldn’t have set out without camping equipment. He himself was still a little trepidatious about four days of roughing it with temperatures hovering around freezing, but his brother adored this sort of thing, and his ethusiasm buoyed them both. Besides, taking the bus any closer would have been ridiculously complicated and required a lot of backtracking, and still required a hike of some sort. And an official border crossing would have put them on people’s radar again. 

The supply run consigned them to an afternoon bus, so they ordered a large lunch that Bård tried not to think of as a last meal: fried sausages with potatoes and vegetables for Bård and meatballs and sauerkraut and berry cobbler for Vegard. They deliberately ordered more than they could reasonably eat in a sitting, and got the rest packed up. When Vegard got up and shouldered his pack--which, being military surplus, had attachments that let him carry his sleeping bag and the tent far more easily--Bård felt a flicker of anxiety, but he crumpled his napkin and stood as well, grabbing his own backpack. "Forth shall we go?"

Vegard grinned. "'He alone is aware who has wandered wide, and far abroad has fared.'" 

They set off.

***

There was something weird about Chi when he brought them their coffees--black with two sugar for Tonia, three cream and three sugar for Emilia--and as soon as they unburdened him of the cups, he perched on the edge of his seat and leaned forward with the smile that did strange things to selected men’s hearts. "Ylvis are sitting two seats down."

Emilia clapped a hand over her mouth; Tonia did an all-over twitch. They had all three of them been in the audience for the taping of the special, and understood maybe one word in every four. For the past ten days they’d been exploring the country. They’d taken pictures in the basement at Big Boy with the very gracious Vidar Myklebust himself, and visited the comic book museum in Brandbu, and spent a day skiing in Hemsedal and a solid three days tromping all over Bergen. Getting on the wrong train this morning--the clock showed that they still had ten minutes for the train to Trondheim, but they’d seen this one leaving and panicked and run and piled on just as the doors were closing and now they were headed back where they'd come from--had felt like a minor disaster, an afternoon of anxiety and rootlessness in an otherwise perfectly planned, perfectly executed holiday, but it had all worked out, hadn’t it?

"What are they doing?" Tonia whispered.

"Bård was asleep. Vegard was just staring out the window."

"Did he look like he didn’t want to be bothered?" Emilia pressed.

"Honestly? He looked worried and depressed. And bored."

"Can’t hurt to ask," Emilia said.

Chi sprang from his seat. "Wait for me," he hissed.

They waited until he’d returned from the Meny Kafé with two hot chocolates, and headed over together to the seats where the brothers sat side by side, Bård nestled adorably into a blanket and Vegard staring glumly out the window with his chin propped up in one hand. He was so lost in thought that he didn’t seem to see them at all until Tonia said, in a soft voice, "Vegard?"

Vegard whirled, and sat bolt upright. "Hi!"

"Excuse us, but we brought you this," Chi said, handing him the hot chocolate. 

"Thank you," Vegard said. For someone who this must happen to all the time, and who could just as easily stroll down to the café himself and get his own hot chocolate, he sounded beyond gracious; he sounded genuinely surprised, and touched at their kindness. 

"And this one is for Bård when he wakes up."

"He’ll be so pleased," Vegard said, putting Bård’s cup in the holder by his side. "Thank you so much. That’s extremely kind of you." He took a sip of his own, and his eyes narrowed in bliss. "Oh my gods, that’s good." Then, to their surprise, he motioned to the facing seats, which were empty. "Please, sit if you like. I know there’s three of you and two of them, but I would love the company."

They managed, with Chi in one seat and Emilia, who was the lightest, in Tonia’s lap. From this vantage point they took in his old clothes, and the battered, grimy bags at his and Bård’s feet. "Are you two going camping or something?"

He nodded. "We just need to take a couple of days away from everything and rest. B-- Bård’s under the weather right now. Well, we’ve both been feeling really rough, but he’s taking a bit longer to recover."

"Oh, I’m sorry," Emilia said in a hushed voice. "Are you sure it’s okay for us to--?"

Bård opened one eye, and gave them a half-smile. He patted the air with one hand, as if motioning them to stay. Then he gave them a thumbs up, and closed his eye again. 

"He’s lost his voice utterly," Vegard said, with an apologetic grin. 

He posed for pictures with the sweetest smile, and Bård flashed a live-long-and-prosper sign. Vegard asked them about their trip, and their impressions of the show, and their lives, and listened, absolutely rapt. 

There was a point at which Tonia realized that they were talking more than he was, probably about things that interested them more than him. And she said, "There’s something I’ve always wondered about, though. You got cut off during the twenty-four-hour feed. What _is_ the difference between a gyroscope and an accelerometer?"

"Oh!" he said with a nervous laugh. "That. A, uh, gyroscope measures orientation to a set plane, like the ground, and an accelerometer measures thrust."

There was a silence afterward. And then Chi said, "...That’s it?"

"Basically, yeah."

"It sounded...when you were talking at the time, it sounded like there was more to it."

Vegard gave them a sheepish grin. "Have you ever been so sleep-deprived that talking coherently felt like trying to bash through a brick wall with a feather pillow?"

They all had, but Emilia had also been so sleep-deprived once that she had nodded off in the middle of a KMFDM concert, and this brought on a fresh round of stories. And Vegard, even when he wasn’t giggling outright, looked to be genuinely enjoying himself, so Tonia didn’t worry anymore. 

An hour and a half later, the train pulled in at Notodden Station, where they understood they could make some connections and eventually wind up in Trondheim. They thanked Vegard for his time today, and all of his hard work on everything ever, and he hugged them and wished them well and thanked them for the company and the cheering up and the stories and the hot chocolate. And even if none of the pictures turned out, they were able to tell Tumblr that the encounter had happened, and that Vegard Ylvisåker hadn’t been the least bit awkward, and spoke fluent Italian to boot.

***

Finn sighed as the train pulled away from the station, leaving those three lovely people behind. They’d been a little oasis of cheer and warmth in a wide, lonely, frightening land.

He turned to Brynjar. "Are you okay? Was that okay?"

Brynjar sat up clumsily, uncovering his dead eye, which was already starting to cloud over. He flashed a thumbs-up with his good hand, and then made a grab for his no-longer-hot chocolate. Finn passed him the cup, and used napkins to wipe up the chocolate that ran out of the left corner of Brynjar's mouth. Brynjar looked frustrated with the dribbling, but utterly ecstatic at the taste. Their bags, when they'd retrieved them, had held drinks and snacks, mostly intact, but nothing that would alleviate more than a week's worth of thirst and hunger. 

Brynjar set the cup down and used the good hand to poke Finn’s cheek.

"Me? I loved them. They sparkled. But..." His face turned sad. "...they thought I was Vegard. And I lied to them. They were kind to me, and I lied to them."

Brynjar shook his head, grinning the half-grin that was all he could manage. He pointed back towards the station, folded his hands over his chest, and then pointed at Finn. _They loved you._

"They love Vegard. I could feel the reflective constitution working on me. Pushing me to be him. To be funny, and a little bit...nerdy. But I’m not Vegard, am I? I’m Finn. And it was pushing me to be Finn, too, because they know who he is, but they don’t really like him." Finn’s voice wavered. "He shoved his wife. He shows off. He doesn’t understand people and he doesn’t care about them--just about stuff. They’d hate me if they knew who I really was." He pushed a hand through his curls. "Finn’s a douchebag. I’m turning into a douchebag." It occurred to him that if he’d had wonderful conversation to distract him from the tug-of-war--that now, frankly, hurt like hell--maybe Brynjar was even worse off. "Did they know Brynjar Kvam?"

Brynjar smiled his half-smile, and folded his hands over his chest again. _They love him._ He reached up--with the bad hand this time--and gave Finn a clumsy pat on the shoulder.

Finn flashed him a weak smile. He wanted to flee humans, break free of the forces shaping him, go and hide somewhere far away from everyone and everything. But there was Brynjar. And they had a commission, of course, but they had no hope of fulfilling that at the moment. First and foremost, there was Brynjar.

***

Lirikael Vinael had a picture of Syl on the right-hand side of his desk. It was one of the ones that had been taken the day they went to Kalvøya. A picture of the two of them together, standing on the rocks hand in hand, with a human tourist taking the glamcam picture all unknowing, had turned out really well. That one was on the marble-topped buffet in the dining room, the one he’d inherited from his great-great-great-grandfather. (In the frame he’d inherited from his great-great-great grandfather too, although he was quite aware that his parents didn’t approve of him relegating the picture of the old man to the attic.) The picture in his office, though, was one he’d taken himself: just Syl against the backdrop of the sea, hair blowing in the wind, smiling the smile that had lifted his heart in a way that made him realize he’d somehow fallen in love with her. It was the first thing he’d set up in his office on the first day of his magisteriate, and it had been in the centre of his desk until last Friday.

On the left hand side of his desk was a picture of Vegard Urheim Ylvisåker. The black-suited human loomed over the camera, frowning dangerously, his eyes lost in shadow. Vinael had found it online. He had printed it out last Friday.

He had always kept Syl on his desk to remind himself of what he was fighting for; he put Vegard there to remind himself of what he was fighting. 

Vinael had met the brother. Bård. Vinael had honestly liked Bård. He’d seemed so nice, so normal. Bård had wished him well. Vinael had nothing against Bård--at least he didn’t think he did, even now. But then Vegard had shown up, looking daggers at everything. Vinael had thought many times that if Lord Aruviel had seen Vegard that day outside of the library, he would never have let him near his daughters. Vegard had turned those sweet girls against their father and towards the darkness in an afternoon. And outside the library, Bård had gone to him. Vinael himself had been only mildly discomposed by this, but later he would see Vegard on the day their rout of the svartalfar hive in Oslo had failed so disastrously, on the day that Lord Aruviel was brought down, and he would understand just how badly everyone had underestimated the human. When he heard that Vegard was dead, that Lord Aruviel had banished him to the frozen wastes of Hardangervidda in one last heroic act, he had of course rejoiced, but in his heart he had known. Weeks later, when newspapers announced that Lord Aruviel’s charges had been reduced because both brothers were alive and well and performing some sort of cabaret nonsense, he hadn’t really been surprised. 

Vinael thought of Syl, of her gently swelling belly, of the little life that was coming into the world soon. Vegard Ylvisåker had children. Three of them. Vinael wondered if he felt anything at all for them. It couldn’t be much, obviously; he knew the house where the wife and children lived, he was having it watched and its communications monitored around the clock, but Vegard had made no attempt to go there, no attempt to contact its inhabitants. If he did, they’d have him. But if he felt anything, how could he stay away? More to the point, how could he do what he was doing, plotting to bring war and death to his own country? It was unfathomable. Well, of course it was; that was the point of evil, that it was unfathomable. If it could be fathomed, it wouldn’t be evil. It would be something else, something you could understand and maybe even forgive. 

Not for the first time, Vinael daydreamed of going to that house and rescuing those human children. Making sure they were protected in the sheltering forest of Hoddmímis holt if worst came to worst, if Ragnarok became the only thing that could save them. But their mother was there, of course, and it was a bit much to suppose that, having chosen evil, she could now be swept off her feet by a vision of purity and nobility.

He thought, for a moment, of Janna, his old svartalfr friend, who had taken up with one of her own kind and moved back to the tunnels. In the end, Janna hadn’t wanted to be saved either. Not that he had anything against svartalfar. It wasn’t about species; it was about self-respect. If you had any, you stopped squirting out babies and took the bloody rings out of your ears and went to school and made something of yourself. 

His inbox chimed at him, and he spun around in his chair to check his e-mail. There was an automatic alert from the search he’d been running for the past week: humans had spotted Ylvis.

He printed out the Tumblr post, read it again and again, looking for clues as to where they were going, what their plan was. If there was anything, it was so coded that he couldn’t fathom it. He’d have to show it to a Human Studies expert, just to be sure. But they were in the south, now. They’d made it all the way south. That meant he could kill the surveillance on the area surrounding Bodø, and he supposed that was a plus. But how had they managed it? And what were they planning?

Vinael set his jaw. It didn’t matter. In the service of the light, with Odin behind him, nothing could stand in his way. Worry wasn’t just useless; it was sacrilegious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Curve's "Doppelganger" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT0dGTNtODc
> 
> (Please note: although the above song was my soundtrack for writing this chapter, the soundtrack for its POSTING is an epic raccoon battle outside of my apartment window, audio for which does not appear to be online at this time. But trust me, it's epic.)


	11. Vibrations, in Diverse Media

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Extreme Brofeels: Alpine Edition / Neuroplastic fantastic / Radio active / Ouroboros / Becoming / The news / Return of the criminal masterminds / Counterintuitive Survival Strategies #5: the weaponized bass drop

Their third day of hiking dawned clear and cold. Bård was awakened by Vegard’s soft gasp. He opened his eyes to see his brother sitting upright, blinking in the sunlight filtering through the nylon of the tent. "Vegard?"

"Nightmare," Vegard said, settling back down into his sleeping bag. 

"Want to talk about it?"

Vegard smiled dreamily. "She let me visit Helene. Everyone’s fine. Maria’s worried, but everyone’s fine."

Bård was the first one out of the tent for once, and after a pee and as much of a wash as he could stand in the frigid water of a nearby creek, he bottled the snowmelt they’d boiled over the fire last night, and used the little camp stove to rehydrate some porridge and tea. Vegard was out and had performed his own morning ablutions before the food was ready, and they struck the tent and enjoyed a hot breakfast before setting out again. Bård was feeling much less sore today. He never thought he’d be grateful for the walk back from Korgfjelltunnelen, but it had certainly primed him for this hike. He was a little surprised to realize that he was enjoying himself out here. 

The GPS on his phone confirmed that they were in Sweden now, in Padjelanta. They’d been walking for two days. The views had been spectacular, and both of them had taken a lot of pictures. 

They’d stopped for the night in a hollowed-out place in the side of a hill. Ten minutes of walking put it behind them. When they passed the rise, the ground dropped away from them in every direction but one, and both shouted aloud at the vista.

All around them rose peaks, the mountains of the Nordryggen, their snowy sides lit pink and gold in the late winter dawn, their valleys still in blue shadow. Bård drank in the sight, feeling big and small and alone and connected all at once, and his heart swelled with the majesty of it all. 

He glanced at Vegard, who grinned back at him. Impulsively, Bård threw his arms around his brother, and Vegard chuckled and patted his back a couple of times before disengaging. But then Bård felt Vegard reach out for his thoughts. Bård met him there, and together they shared a wordless, boundless joy.

***

Finn had taken them to Nordagutu, for no other reasons than that it looked tiny and the train went there. For the past two nights he had rented a cabin, from a grandmotherly woman who kept hitting on him. He was gracious and brought her fresh fruit, and she kept knocking a few kroner off the price, which suited him just fine. The money Helene had given him was only supposed to last a few days, and he doubted that renting a cabin had been one of the expenses she’d anticipated. What they’d do when the money ran out, he didn’t know.

Brynjar was sitting at the table when he got in with the groceries, trying to pick up a pencil with his weak hand. It kept dropping, and Brynjar would screw up his face, whisper, "Sunflower," and try again. Finn was on his blind side, and he swivelled his head around until he could see him, then greeted him with a nod before returning to the pencil. He _was_ healing. Finn had practically had to carry him to and from the train station, but yesterday he had managed to take a few limping steps with his hand on Finn’s arm for balance, and today he’d gotten from the bed to the table unaided. 

Finn used his purchases to fix them lunch: bread and cheese cut into cubes, with sliced tomatoes and peppers. He didn’t mind meat, but Brynjar had trouble chewing it, so it could wait; and he’d heard that greens were supposed to be good nourishment, but the thought of them still seemed unspeakably morbid to him. Cheese was nice, though. And the strawberries he’d brought for dessert. And sugar was a delight. He knew where it came from, but it was processed enough that he didn’t have to think about it. 

Keeping these bodies fed was blasted inconvenient. That was probably, he reflected, why eating was so fun; because no one would bother otherwise. 

When he put their plates down, Brynjar stopped fiddling with the pencil. "Any better?" Finn asked.

Brynjar seemed to consider for a moment, and then nodded. He frowned in concentration. And then he said--although it was so badly slurred that it barely sounded like a word--"You?"

Finn dropped his cheese, and beamed. "Brynjar! Me? Um...I’m okay. Physically. There aren't even marks. Scared, though. No idea what we’re going to do. No idea if they’re even alive. What if they...what if we weren’t there, and...?"

Brynjar had shoved a cube of bread into his mouth, and was chewing this very carefully. He patted Finn’s shoulder, and swallowed. Then he said, "I... I..." After a long silence, he bit his lip, sighed, and picked up the pencil in his right hand. Holding Finn’s grocery receipt steady with the bad hand, he wrote, _Alive. In Padjelanta._

"Do you think we should go? Are you okay to go?"

Brynjar nodded. 

"Now? Or in the morning?"

"Murrr...ng."

"Okay. Great, this is great! How did you find out?"

A furrow appeared between Brynjar’s eyebrows. His one blue eye looked lost; the other had turned milky and opaque. He fluttered his good hand at it uncertainly. 

Finn finished his lunch, cleaned up, and, as he had done for the past two days, pulled out the little knife that had been among the things from Helene, and resumed carving the ash slat that Brynjar had pulled out of him. Now, though, it was more than an empty gesture to keep his hands busy; if he cut off part of the bottom and attached it to the top as a crosspiece...yes. Yes! It wasn’t over yet; they were going somewhere. He still didn’t know how Brynjar knew, but anything was better than this.

***

If the kids were still awake, they were at least staying awake quietly to themselves, and Maria wasn’t going to give them a hard time about it under the circumstances. She was watching the news. She and Helene had repeatedly assured each other that if anything bad happened, the police would certainly notify them before the media. Neither had added, but she was sure they both thought, _Unless they were unrecognizable._ Helene was placing a lot of faith in the dreams she’d had that their husbands were all right. Still, Maria watched the news, every night, for some sign of Bård.

The anchorwoman was talking about a family of ducks that had taken up residence in a kindergarten in Frogner when a burst of static from the kitchen temporarily drowned her out. Maria nearly jumped out of her skin. She grabbed up the poker from the fireplace--in case it proved to be a static-wielding burglar, she supposed--and went to investigate. 

In the kitchen, now only dimly lit by the light over the stove, she was at a loss. The only thing in here that had a speaker was her great-grandfather’s antique radio, which sat over the cupboards, and that wasn’t even plugged in, let alone turned on. She turned on the lights, and waited. 

The static erupted again. It was unmistakably coming from the radio. 

" _Marrrrr...iiiiii...a. Oh. Kay._ "

Maria pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth. It was Bård’s voice, but it was a nightmare voice, slurred and distorted. If this was Bård, he was not okay.

Then there were a few staccato bursts of static, repeating. Almost like...

Maria grabbed a piece of paper. The kids had taken all the pens again, so she had to transcribe the dots and dashes in eyeliner. 

When she was satisfied that she’d gotten the whole message, she looked up Morse code on her phone. She didn’t know it by heart anymore; it had been a long time. 

R-D- O-K-F-I-N-N-O-K-K-V-A-M-H-U-R-T-B-Å-R-D-O-K-V-E-G-A-R-D-O-K-F-I-N-N-O-K-K-V-A-M-H-U-R-T-B-Å-R-D-O-K-V-E-G-A

As soon as she'd transcribed it and understood, the static cut off, and the only sound in the kitchen was the hum of the refrigerator.

Excited, she phoned Helene. Her sister-in-law sounded like she’d been sleeping, but when she heard Maria’s voice, she became quite alert. "What’s up? Did you hear something?"

Maria exhaled a little puff of relieved laughter. "I got a message from Brynjar. He’s hurt, but everyone else is fine."

"Great!" Helene said. "I mean, not about Brynjar, though. Is it bad?"

"I don’t know. His voice sounded terrible, so he Morsed to me."

"I’m glad he’s alive, though," Helene said. "Finn?"

"Apparently fine. And I guess they must have all found each other, or how would he know how they are?"

They said their goodbyes, then, and Maria turned off the television. Before she went to bed for the night, she softly opened the door to each child’s room, and whispered, "Your dad is okay."

***

Melantha Aruviel found social networking indispensible for the various kinds of work that she did. It enabled her to disseminate news stories and opinion pieces, set up face-to-face meetings with people, and keep in touch with friends she’d met at school and at conferences.

It also, occasionally, reminded her that she had gone to school with some terrible people. 

When she logged onto Faebook that afternoon, she was momentarily thrilled to see Vegard's face, in an article shared by one such high school friend. She recognized Vegard's picture as being from one of the stage shows: he was wearing black, with his hair quite long and his arms outstretched, and the stage lights creating a green fog around him. Then she scrolled down, and saw the headline: _Human interloper starts glamour arms race!_ Under that, in smaller type: _Experts raise nuclear fears._

It was from AlphaNews, of course. When she'd been a little girl, _The Alpha Chronicle_ had been the most trusted news source in the realm. Two years ago, she and Jessalyn had nicknamed it the Newspaper for Scared Old Brighties. She'd grown up, of course, and that had changed how she saw and understood what Alpha was reporting, but Alpha had changed too, especially in the past decade. Beloved columnists and specialists had retired or left for other papers, and their replacements were increasingly shrill, seeing any change at all as a sign of corruption and decay. Matthias Gamlegarde had written an oft-shared article blaming Alpha's decline on technology: the speed of the internet, combined with advent of the glamcam and the newfound ability to include photographs, meant that writers spent less time analyzing and more time sensationalizing. Melantha thought that probably it had more to do with the paper's new owners, a trio of young Bright Court elves who'd been a few years behind her in university, but as Jessalyn was fond of saying, it could be two things. 

Melantha read the short article, frowning. According to sources, Vegard Ylvisåker, the disgraced human activist and fugitive from elven justice, in conjunction with svartalfar radicals, had developed a way of maintaining glamour even in the presence of dálki-issue glamour disruptors. This could only mean that humans had cracked glamour, and sources were speculating as to why the Samkoma was not yet on high alert. 

She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. This was because of her, wasn't it? It didn't matter that she'd told the investigators every which way that they couldn't have been involved in that explosion and there was no reason to bother them; she'd brought the brothers back into this world, and now they were in trouble. She frowned fiercely at the article. Obviously it was spurious; Vegard was sharp, but as he and Bård had pointed out, not sharp enough to wade in and solve problems that had plagued the elven community for centuries or millennia. So where was the story coming from?

"Sources." It was used twice, and linked both times. Melantha followed each link to a different source. The first link took her to an unabashedly brightist blog. The second took her to another blog that basically quoted the first blog post wholesale and then added, "Ask yourself why the Samkoma aren't on high alert about this. You know the answer. This is what they want. In their twisted minds they would rather watch the humans nuke the world to a blasted wasteland than offend even a single svartalfr."

Melantha followed the source links in the unabashedly brightist blog, and found another brightist blog asserting that Vegard couldn't have cracked glamour without the help of the svartalfar themselves, but now he would surely share the discovery with other humans. That had a source link too, and she followed it to another blog. This one simply said, "THIS couldnt have happened unless he has a glamor disruptor disruptor!!!" "THIS" was a link, and Melantha clicked it and found a two-paragraph AlphaNews story about the brothers eluding capture in Mosjøen. 

She sat stunned in front of the screen. Alpha had taken the worst and wildest speculations about its own news story and turned them into "sources" for a whole new article. It was like a snake eating its own tail. It would be very funny indeed, if she didn't know that people were reading this and believing it and worrying that their world would come crashing down any second.

Her friend's comment on the article was, "im not a ragnarok person but this is scary stuff." 

Melantha started typing out a long rebuttal. In the middle of the fourth paragraph, she erased everything, and wrote, "Trust me, you have nothing to fear from Vegard Ylvisåker. I've met him, and he wouldn't hurt a fly."

The reply was almost immediate. "ur just sayin that cuz he looks like tomas."

While she was typing that no, actually, it wasn't that Vegard looked like Tomas, but rather that Tomas had looked like Vegard--and thinking that that was making it personal, and perhaps she ought not to let Julia make it personal--another notification sounded. Her friend had posted a link to an interview with the human Einar Tørnquist, cued to a spot where Vegard went to an inordinate amount of trouble to kill a fly in the studio. 

Melantha covered her face with her hands, and enjoyed a moment of bleak and silent laughter. Point taken. She would really have to be more careful about how she put things.

***

They breakfasted on the last of the bread and cheese and strawberries, and then set out from the cabin, Finn carrying their bags, Brynjar walking with the stick that Finn had carved for him. A raven’s head, with its curved beak, formed the top piece, while a squirrel chased down the middle and one lupine eye showed through the greenery at the bottom. It was beautiful work, and Brynjar had been touched to receive it.

He was improving steadily. Today walking was much easier, especially with the stick to lean on. His hand was still weak, but he could grip things lightly. And the feeling was returning to the left side of his face. The muscles were beginning to wake up again, and he could feel a firm touch on his cheek. Of course, that meant he could also feel all the times he’d bitten the inside of his cheek, too, but those at least healed quickly. His brain was taking _days_. Fortunately, if there was one thing Brynjar Kvam had excelled at in his previous life, it was patience. 

Still, he was getting inklings, here and there, that some of the changes might be permanent; that he would never again be able to pass for Bård Ylvisåker, at least not easily. His voice, although a bit clearer today, had become more nasal, and it was coming from a different part of his throat. Grammar was amazingly hard now, and when he tried at it, it was like the effort burst out in other places and he got words all over everything. 

His vision was coming back in that eye, although it wasn’t seeing what the other eye was seeing. It was nice to have depth perception again, but--such depths! Right now it was all just shadows. He feared a little for himself when they cleared. Probably, though, the person he was turning into would just take it in stride. Sometimes, that was a comfort, and sometimes it scared him more than anything else.

But he said none of this to Finn. Finn was having his own struggles with becoming. Brynjar just limped alongside him.

He heard a pickup truck behind them, and turned to look. Farmer. Lonely. Worried about his daughter, who was in university in Finland and--oh my--newly president of the student union, although the farmer didn’t know. He was headed to Kongsberg. Brynjar put out a hand, and waved him down.

"Brynjar?" Finn said. 

"A ride," Brynjar said. "You talks." As an afterthought, he pulled up the hood on his hoodie, and adjusted it so that it made his hair fall over the bad eye.

"Where are you boys headed?" the driver asked. 

"North," Finn told him. "We're supposed to rendezvous with some friends, and we thought to hike, but Brynjar's had a bit of a flareup."

"Climb in," the farmer said, moving a bag behind the front seat of the truck to give them room. "Does the handicapped fella need a hand?"

Brynjar thought about it, and nodded. There was a good chance he'd be okay to get up on his own, but he was risking a topple from the running board. So while he used the good leg to step up, the farmer hauled on his arm until he was up and seated. Finn helped him do up the seatbelt before settling in. 

The farmer stared at them. "You two look awfully familiar. Have you been on television or something?"

"I was in a tractor commercial when I was younger," Finn offered. 

"Really, now? What kind of tractor?"

"Kirovets."

"I have a Terrion, you know. Secondhand."

"Do you like it?" Finn asked. "I, really, I know nothing about tractors. I was very young. I just stood there. But it looked really big and cool."

With a question here and a question there, Finn kept the farmer talking all the way to Kongsberg, with Brynjar making little interested noises. He talked about his farm, his family, his daughter, the state of the world in general. At the end of the ride, before sliding out of the middle seat, Brynjar begged him, "Take care. Sees doctor. Watch heart." But the farmer only laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, and drove away. 

So. Now they were in Kongsberg. The farmer had gone a little out of his way to let them off in the city centre near the north bank of the Numedalslågen. They'd been travelling for less than an hour and a half, but Brynjar felt leaden and drained. 

Finn left him in a park by the riverbank, on a bench with their bags, and returned with a chicken shawarma, neatly cut in half. If Brynjar chewed carefully, he could eat it without taking a bite of his cheek. The food helped a little, and he was able to point to a vehicle in the parking lot behind them.

While they sat on a park bench and waited for the owner to come back, Finn brushed Brynjar's hair back from his bad eye and had a peek. "It's clearing," he observed.

"Is," Brynjar agreed. Fatigue was making his slurring worse. "Don't lets me freeze, Finn." And then his eyes drifted closed.

***

At midnight, the antique radio in the kitchen crackled to life again. Maria, reading a novel, looked up.

_Maria? Brynjar. Pardon. Exhausted. S'okay. All okay._

***

"Am I speaking with Ljón Abatrael?"

"None other," Abatrael said. "What can I do for you?"

"You're still looking for two brothers?" the voice on the other end of the phone said.

"We are."

"Yeah, this is Dev Coriel, with the Padjelanta dálki, and probably this is nothing, but we have a couple of travellers coming in from the west, headed straight for Varggrav."

"What do they look like?"

"Hard to tell," Coriel said. "They're wearing yellow safety jackets with silver reflective banding, and Finland hoods."

"Bloody hell. Those are our targets. Scoop 'em up! But be careful; don't be fooled by anything they throw at you, even if it stands up to a glamour disruptor. They're wily, they're powerful, and lios alfar lives mean nothing to them." 

Abatrael rang off, and stalked out of his office into the Peace Division miðstöð. "All right," he said, and the miðstöð fell silent. "The Ylvisåkers have just been spotted on the eastern edge of Padjelanta, on foot. Pull surveillance from the rail system, and--wait, no, you know what? Leave it there, just in case. Wyriel, Anathael, Patruchiel, you're with me. Let's bag us some terrorists."

" Ljón!" one of the junior officers cried, rushing forward with a newspaper. "Have you seen this?"

It was a copy of today's _Alpha Chronicle_ , and the front page confirmed that the human brothers had developed the technology to fool glamour disruptors. His warning to the Padjelanta dálki had come just in time.

***

The brothers had been hiking for four days now. The goal today was to cross the park border into Sarek by nightfall, and find the entrance to Asgard tomorrow.

The vistas were still spectacular--if anything, getting more so--and Vegard, bolstered by his dreams of his family, seemed to be perfectly in his element. Bård, though, could foresee a time when he would begin to tire of this. He missed proper food, he hadn't showered in four days, and there were parts of him he wasn't sure would ever be warm again. He was eager to get into Sarek and start following the next stage of the vølvà's instructions before he started to hate his life. 

In midafternoon, he'd turned back on the trail to pee, and as he was zipping up, he saw figures at the base of what the GPS on his phone had told him was the Kierkevare massif, a great group of peaks that they'd passed yesterday. He dabbled his hands in the snow, pulled on his gloves, and then ran forward to tug Vegard's arm. "Look," he said, pointing. "Other climbers?"

Vegard squinted into the distance. Then he rummaged around in his pack and pulled out the pair of battered binoculars he'd begged for his eleventh birthday. When he looked through, he said, "They found us."

"Are you sure it's not climbers?"

Wordlessly, Vegard handed him the binoculars. 

Bård looked. Five elves in light blue parkas sped towards them on something that looked a little like bicycles, hovering above the snow. They were covering a lot of ground in a hurry. And at their belts were not guns, but tiny crossbows. "What do we do? We can't outrun them."

"I think we could find a place to hide before they got to us," Vegard said, "but our footprints would lead them right to us."

Bård considered, and started to backtrack in their own footsteps. No, it wasn't working; they looked weird. Even if they could backtrack convincingly and then dig down into the snow, it would still be really clear what they'd done and where they were. 

Vegard didn't seem to be paying attention, though. Instead, he was staring, not at the elves, but at the peaks of Kierkevare. And then he said, very softly, but in his deepest voice, " _Boom_."

At first there was nothing. Then something began to change, but Bård had trouble pinpointing what it was for the first few seconds. And then slowly, hypnotically, the entire side of one of the peaks shifted, sliding downward as a roar built in the air. It was nowhere near the elves, but the bike-things wheeled around and started racing back the way they'd come--except for one, who kept going.

"No!" Vegard yelped suddenly. He clutched at Bård's sleeve and pointed to another peak, closer to the elves, where another volume of snow was detaching itself. "No no no no no no no no no no no..." The lone bike-thing kept going until it was swallowed up in a cloud of snow. "...no no no no no no no no no..."

Bård grabbed his brother's elbow and spun him away from the sight. "Don't. Don't." He took Vegard firmly by the shoulders, and walked him to a sheltered place behind a rocky outcropping, and sat him down on one of the sleeping mats.

"...no no no no no no no no..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Røyksopp's "What Else is There" (Trentemøller remix) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT5o8s4VKXg
> 
> A word on Brynjar Kvam's dialogue: as a person who still has trouble understanding spoken Norwegian in any of its incarnations, the best I can do is research, guesswork, and considerable creative license. I know that some of the idiosyncrasies I've introduced--particularly fun with subject/verb agreements--wouldn't make any sense in Norwegian, but I beg your indulgence. Further, now seems like a good time to express huge thanks to Mona Lisa for saving me literally hours, probably, by posting the Brynjar Kvam segments separately.


	12. Haunted and Hounded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hero / Hollow man / Monster in a dark place / Stage Two / Silver and blue / Mr. Kvam’s wild ride / Gemini ex machina

It took only half an hour, but large amounts of magic, to extract Officer Dulcinea Selinael after the avalanche. The entire mass of snow had to be stabilized, and she had to be kept warm without compromising the air pocket that Officer Iriniel had thought to throw around her. 

When she was brought, shocky and shivering, out of the snow, and laid on the evacuation pod they'd called in, her riddari loomed over her. "What in the name of Grimnir's granite gonads were you thinking?"

Selinael had been weeping, but she squared her jaw and said, "I thought it was an illusion. I learned better when it hit me, obviously. But you told us they can beat glamour disruptors. And if you're going to tell me I should have turned back, then we're always going to lose. Because _they_ have no scruples, and they'll use ours against us." 

Riddari Coriel sighed, and patted her shoulder, giving her a little squeeze just before the others sealed the pod for transport. There was, he reflected, a very thin line between being a hero and being an utter fool.

***

The nice old woman whose car they’d staked out the day before had dropped them off in the town of Hønefoss, and Finn and Brynjar had spent the night huddled under a bridge over the Randselva, wearing as many layers of clothing as possible. Brynjar had slept on the bench, he’d slept in the dear old woman’s car as she prattled on about her ungrateful children and her theories about wind farms and Protestantism, and he’d slept under the bridge, nodding off almost immediately despite the cold. Finn had managed, at best, a few minutes of chilly dozing, plagued by grotesque images and nightmarish fancies.

Now he was in despair as he walked back to the bridge with orange juice, peanut butter, and a loaf of bread. At the rate they were travelling, it would take weeks to find Bård and Vegard, but after today's purchases he had six kroner left.

When he got back, he found Brynjar sitting under an apple tree not yet in bud. Brynjar was a bit clumsy getting to his feet, but he didn’t need the stick. "Finn," he said with his new voice, smiling with both halves of his mouth. The film over his left eye had cleared, and the iris was the light grey of a November sky.

Finn forced down the panic that had been building since he’d awakened today, and started making them peanut butter sandwiches using the lid's inner seal as a kind of spreader. They sat under the tree to eat. When they were finished, he knelt in front of Brynjar and said, "Let’s take a look at your eye. Close the good one?"

Brynjar closed his blue eye, and covered it with a hand.

Finn held up three fingers. "Okay, tell me what you see."

Brynjar’s speech was much clearer today--well, his enunciation was clearer--but the changes Finn had been noticing, instead of resolving as Brynjar's brain healed, had only gotten more pronounced. His accent was different. His intonation was a bit of a sing-song now, with stops in odd places, and his grammar was...highly idiosyncratic, was probably the kindest way to put it. Sometimes he spoke in Bergensk and sometimes he spoke in Nynorsk and sometimes he spoke in nonsensk. "I sees the copy of the character of the parodification of an empty man. You lies awake at night wondering how real thou art."

Finn swallowed hard, and adjusted the position of his hand. "I mean, how many fingers am I holding up?"

The grey eye--if it had been Vegard facing it and not Finn, he might have blurted out all unknowing that nine years ago he had reluctantly eaten one just like it--shifted down. "Just one. It are not a very nice finger, Finn."

"You’re not being a very nice man right now, Brynjar."

Brynjar opened his other eye. "I wondering too. About me." The words were probably meant to be comforting, but in his sing-song, they just sounded unnerving. "They does say that moving furniture changeth the personality of a room. Maybe it works with brains too. Maybe I has pulled the real me out with the coffee table."

Finn went over his implanted memories. "You really did come back as Brynjar Kvam."

"Twenty-six percent reflective constitution," Brynjar reminded him, levering himself to his feet. He retrieved their bags from under the bridge--still hanging Finn’s pack on his wrist instead of grasping it with the bad hand--and took up his stick. "One in four of us, or one fourth in one of us, or half of one of us in two of us, are made up of what other people finds us to be."

"It makes perfect sense," Finn said, taking his bag from Brynjar. "Not what you just said, mind you, but...this." For perhaps the hundredth time he went back over everything that had gone wrong.. "I still don't think we would ever have fooled Helene and Maria, but if we had constant feedback from people who knew Bård and Vegard and thought we were them, we might have at least pulled it off at the office."

They walked, Brynjar leading the way. "When thou wert Vegard and I were Bård, perhaps. But now you are Finn the materialist douchebag, and I am Brynjar Kvam, the man who tell you what's going on in a way that leaves you still wondersome. Had the latter happened a little at a time, I might have resisted, but withdrawal of the ash from my head, followed immediately by the soothing presence of his knowers and adorers, caused an ineluctable illimitable inimitable Brynjarness to rush in to fill the void."

"I don't like this," Finn said.

"I are not overly smitten myself, Finn, but this is my only me. I does not get another one."

"Where are we going?"

"Three blocks away, Frida Halvorsen have just thrown away her late husband’s clothing, and five blocks from that, the Eide family have thrown away an unopened Grandiosa, only a little freezerburned. Then a nap, and then I will finding us a ride, a good one."

***

Vegard perched on a rock, one arm around his knees, which were drawn up under him. The other hand was clamped over his mouth, and tears still leaked from his eyes. His mind kept reflexively seeking ways to think his way out of this, to make things better, but you didn’t get better from murdering someone. With magic. _With magic._

Bård kept telling him that he couldn’t have known, that it was self-defence. They’d seen the elfshot bows; they knew what that stuff could do. That wasn’t quite right, though; the elf had been nowhere near them. Vegard had just wanted to stop them, slow them down, give himself and his brother time to get away. He should have known that you couldn’t just create an isolated avalanche. In his heart of hearts he must have known.

He wondered about the elf he’d killed. Spouse? Children? Parents? Brothers and sisters? Vegard had just made this the worst day of their lives. Even if he could make some kind of self-defence argument, he had hurt all of these other people who had never done him any harm. 

A few days ago he’d beaten up a little girl. Now he’d killed somebody. He hadn’t started out as a monster, but he was turning into one. He could say their pursuit had driven him to it, but Bård had been with him all the way, and Bård hadn’t done any of those things. 

Bård had also begged him not to follow his first impulse, to start back the way they’d come, hands aloft, hoping that they wouldn’t shoot but mindful that they had cause to. And Bård clearly had the better judgment of the two of them, so Vegard would sit here, cold and cramped and hollow-feeling, willing to accept the remote possibility that time would make a difference to his thought processes, but not at all convinced that it would. If it did, if he could somehow go on with his life, what kind of monster would he be then? But Bård was asking him to stay here, and even if Vegard couldn’t trust himself anymore, he trusted Bård.

There were sounds, now, at the mouth of the hollow where Bård had deposited him and told him to stay put. His brother came back in, breath steaming, dragging both of their backpacks on the other sleeping mat. He said, "I walked all over the place with this thing. Including to two more caves. That should buy us some time." He squeezed Vegard’s shoulder. "How are you doing?" He looked down, and said, "Bloody hell." He fished a tissue out of his pack, dabbed at Vegard’s eyes, and then pushed it into his hand. "Blow. You’re like one of the kids, I swear."

Vegard blew, looked around him, and then got up, clumsily. He scratched a little hollow in the frozen dirt of the cave floor, put the tissue in there, and piled rocks over it. Just like they’d be doing to the dálki officer he’d killed. He crumpled against the rock he’d been sitting on. 

"Vegard, don’t. Vegard, don’t." Bård dropped to a crouch and turned him so that they were facing each other. "You’re the one with the wilderness knowledge, right? You’re the one with the military training. You’re the big brother. I need you to hold it together, all right?"

Vegard turned his face away. 

A few minutes later, he became cognizant of a sound, a _tchik...tchik...tchik_. It was interspersed with cursing. Curiosity won over despair, and he turned, and found Bård in front of a pyramid of sticks, fumbling ineptly with the flint. 

Vegard watched dully for a few minutes. Then he got up, and knelt next to Bård, and took the flint from his hands, and started the fire. At the last moment, he saw a burned place where it had caught before, and glared at his brother. Bård shrugged.

With the fire going, Vegard retreated again, to the other side of the rock. 

Gradually, he became aware that he was being a little rough on himself. That it might even be nice to join his brother in the warmth. "Stop it," he snapped. "It is not okay."

"I know," Bård said. "I’m not saying it is."

"You’re trying to make me feel better. About killing someone."

There was a soft sound from beside the fire, and then Bård sat down next to him, carefully not looking at him. "I know what I said before. But you’re right. I can see some of what’s going on in your head, and you’re right about that part, that nothing can make it okay. And I was wrong to try to talk you out of that. I was scared. I’m sorry."

Vegard laughed at the idea of Bård apologizing to him. "Go back to the fire."

"No, shut up. This is important. It’s okay for you to be screwed up about this. If you weren’t, I’d be afraid of you. But I need you to keep going, okay? I can feel you bottoming out, and I need you not to. Because all the stuff that’s true about whoever that was, that made killing him wrong? It’s true about you, too."

Vegard shook his head. "I can’t, I can’t, I can’t."

"That’s okay," Bård said. "I can." He didn’t send comfort. He instead gathered up the connections that Vegard had let go dead and cold, out of horror at what he’d done, and sent them flaring to life again. And Vegard saw himself not as a lonely monster whose deed had cut him off from the rest of humanity, but as the father, husband, brother, son, uncle, friend, colleague that he was. He resisted a little, but stopped when he realized that seeing himself through their eyes made it easier for him to imagine the man he’d just killed through the eyes of the people who had loved him. The dálki officer was more of a loss to Vegard the man who had made a terrible mistake than to Vegard the monster. 

Long later, Bård said, "We might as well spend the night here. The sun’s going down."

"I’m sorry, Bård. I screwed us up."

"I’m not saying you should have done what you did, but if you hadn’t, we’d be even more screwed up."

There was a soft, deep noise from deeper inside the cave. "Avalanche?" Vegard said in a small voice.

"Oh, the irony," Bård groaned. 

The noise resolved into discrete, steady impacts. Almost like...footsteps. 

Bård’s eyes had gone very wide in the firelight. "Bloody hell," he said.

***

_Excuse me for news, Maria. This is Brynjar Kvam. Changeling news: the two wounded in the Ullern studio explosion two weeks ago are recoveringing. Finn Weber pronounces himself quite fit, although for what remains unspecified. Meanwhile Brynjar Kvam, having just taken a refreshing nap, confirmifies that his injuries, which have changed him completely, have made him even more alike unto himself than usual. The damage, which is permanent, should be completely healed soon, and he apologizes for any confusion, profusion, diffusion, illusions, delusions, and contusions that may result._

_Husband news: Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker proceedeth ever eastward on a quest to locate the gods. Noted atheist and gyroscope expert Vegard Ylvisåker offered a commentary on the journey, saying, ‘What the hell were we thinking?’ His brother have issued the following statement: ‘Shut up or it’ll hear you.’ It is 18:18, and my name is Brynjar Kvam._

***

Brynjar cut an impressive figure as he entered the pub. Over Bård’s castoff corduroys and a dark green sweater, he was wearing a dead man’s coat, the late Mr. Halvorsen’s ankle-length grey duster. He was carrying his carved ash staff, but not using it. It took Finn’s practiced eye to see the trace of a wobble in his step.

Finn trailed nervously behind him. He’d found a cream-coloured linen suit and a crushed velvet burgundy dinner jacket that appealed to him, but he didn’t feel like he had the mojo to pull either of them off right now, so they were in his bag, and he was in black jeans, a red sweater, and a white hoodie. The meal they’d made of the cold freezerburned pizza would have to hold them until morning, and they didn’t have the money to drink. He had no idea what they were doing here.

Until, that was, Brynjar sat down next to a thin, dishevelled, fortysomething man drinking alone at the bar. Brynjar stared at him silently until the man turned to look at him, eyebrows raised. "If I gives you the answer to your burningest question," Brynjar said, "will you gives me your car?"

The man snorted. "Burningest question, huh? You know what? Sure. Tell me, um..." He tapped his chin with a forefinger. His goatee made it look like he’d just swallowed a whole dog, except for the tail. 

But before he could think of a suitably burning question, Brynjar said in his matter-of-fact singsong voice, "She are not having an affair. The idea would horrifies her. She has Stage Two breast cancer. She is very afraid, and first thinked to protect you and Anna and Jo, and now cannot figuring out how to tell you. She waits out the sickness from the chemotherapy at her sister’s, and dreads the day she knows is coming, when she cannot hides it and will have to explain."

The man had gone very pale. "You’d...you’d better not be..."

Brynjar fixed the grey eye on him, and the man's face crumpled and he fell quiet, weeping silently in the bar. Either no one noticed, or people were doing a very good job of pretending. 

Finn put a hand on his shoulder. "You should go to her."

"How?" he demanded. "I just gave my car away. She’s been doing chemo all this time..."

"We will drives you," Brynjar promised. 

"I thought she was losing weight to look good for someone!"

Together, they coaxed him out the door. He went to a red Mazda, automatically headed for the driver’s side, and then stopped, shaking his head. "It’s okay," Finn said gently. "You know where you live better than we do."

The man drove to a small, neat house that had a second car parked out front. Finn found himself thinking that he probably could have walked, and quelled the thought in disgust. "Before we let you go," he said instead, "promise us you won't be angry with her."

The stranger put a hand over his eyes, and sat, for a moment, shoulders shaking. "I'm angry at myself," he said softly. "I'm just...angry. But not at her. You're right. I can’t let her think it's at her." The man put his hand on the door. "It feels weird saying this when I’m giving you my car, but...thank you." He met Brynjar’s eyes in the rearview mirror. "Can you tell me if she’ll be all right?"

"I cannot," Brynjar said heavily. "But she is otherwise healthy and her chances is good."

When the man got out, his shoulders sagged for a moment, and then he squared them, and walked to his front door.

Finn slid into the driver’s seat, and Brynjar climbed forward. Finn took them north.

***

"Humans out," the troll said. It towered over them, lumpen and ugly in the flickering of the fire. "Peace Division walks. No trouble."

"We didn’t mean to be trouble," Bård stammered, stomping out the fire and scattering the ashes. "We just needed a place to shelter, and--"

"Humans OUT!"

For a moment he worried about Vegard, but his older brother had enough of a sense of self-preservation to grab up his pack and scramble out of the cave alongside him. 

They’d both nixed travelling at night, thinking that their headlamps wouldn’t illuminate enough of the way to be safe, but would provide a handy beacon for the Peace Division. But the night was clear, and there was enough of a moon to light their way, or at least what Bård thought their way was. Vegard still looked haunted and heartsick, and Bård reflected that probably that wasn’t going to change anytime soon, but he was at least aware of his surroundings, and would indicate directions with a quiet, "Here."

After the adrenalin wore off, after they had hurried over a ridge and were out of sight of the troll cave, the urgency faded. The night was dark blue and light blue and glittering silver, the only sound the soft crunch of their boots in the snow. It was a night that could kill them a hundred different ways, and it was simply gorgeous.

"How are you doing?" he asked Vegard.

"Hollow," Vegard said, after some apparent thought. "Peaceful."

Six tiny lights emerged from the side of one of the mountains up ahead, and headed down the mountain straight for them, getting bigger and nearer. 

"Frightened," said Vegard. "Very frightened." But he kept walking forward.

***

Fortunately, the Mazda’s gas tank had been nearly full when they took it, and although it was a 2008 model it had been maintained well enough to get pretty good mileage. They would have to travel as far as they could on a single tank of gas, Finn supposed, and then abandon the car somewhere where it could be found and returned to its owner.

He stopped in Bagn, pulling off into the parking lot of a closed Spar Market, because his lack of sleep was beginning to tell. "I’m just going to close my eyes for a bit," he told Brynjar. "Wake me in fifteen."

"May I drives?" asked Brynjar.

Finn, exhausted, couldn’t help a mirthless laugh. "How are you supposed to drives? You can’t even talks."

Brynjar closed his eyes and said, in Bård’s voice, in flawless Oslo dialect, "I. Can. Talk. Just. Fine. But it takes very little energy to sound like I do, and very much to sound like you do. I would rather devote that energy to driving."

Finn undid his seatbelt, and got out. A moment later, Brynjar scrambled out, and they switched seats. 

"Let’s just see how you do in the parking lot," Finn said.

Brynjar rolled his eyes, and did up his seatbelt. He adjusted his mirrors, checked his blind spot, and pulled out of the parking spot. Then he smoothly pulled into another, one that was boxed in by cars on three sides, and managed to be both between the lines and a decent distance from the cars on both sides. "Satisfaction?"

"Satisfaction," Finn said. 

Brynjar pulled onto the highway. He was courteous, mellow, and rule-abiding. By the time he got to the town limits, Finn had quite relaxed. He could probably nod off like this. 

Then they crossed the limits, and Brynjar floored the gas pedal.

The world was grey now, a grey road through a grey wood. "Brynjar?" Finn said shakily. His voice sounded strange and flat in his ears. "Did we actually leave the spectrum behind? Or did we hit a tree and die, and am I now in hell?"

"I can sees shortcuts," Brynjar said, without taking his eyes off the road, thank goodness.

"Where are you taking us?"

"To Bård and Vegard. Where else?"

One thing about it--Finn was wide awake now.

***

Side by side, Bård and Vegard slogged uphill as the lights drew nearer. They were audible at odd moments now, a high-pitched whining zipping noise in the distance.

Bård quickened to a jog, and Vegard joined him there for a few moments, but then they slowed again to a fast walk. 

Vegard didn’t know about his brother, but he was too exhausted and dispirited to run, and not entirely sure that he should. He should face justice for what he’d done; the only thing that kept him from staying still and putting his hands up was a suspicion that the Peace Division was more interested in fighting monsters than dispensing justice. But he was suffused with a bone-deep weariness that simply wouldn’t let him go any faster, and with a sense of futility that had nothing to do with his emotional state: there was no cover close enough to run to, and in the moonlight their footprints were clearly visible. 

When the engine noises were constant, he halted, and ignored Bård hauling on his arm. "Go," he begged. "There’s no point in letting them catch us both."

"Go where?" Bård demanded. 

"Maybe if they have me, they’ll ignore you."

"No," Bård said. They turned, hands held up, and the lights came to meet them, blinding them, their white glare turning the night around them from silver and blue to pitch black. 

From nowhere and everywhere, a voice said, "Vegard Ylvisåker and Bård Ylvisåker, you are under arrest on charges of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, conspiracy to sow discord, destruction of dàlki property, and attempted murder."

Then there was a mighty mechanical growl and a flash of headlights, and out of nowhere a dark red car hit the hillside, tires churning the snow and scattering the lights before skidding to a halt a foot shy of them. Goggling, Vegard watched himself lean out of the passenger side window and motion frantically. "Get in."

He and Bård scrambled into the back seat. The driver turned around. It was Bård, another Bård, with wild mismatched eyes. "The changelings," Bård said. "You’re alive!"

The driver nodded, once, and hit the gas. The tires spun in snow, there was a gentle patter of elfshot bolts against one of the side panels, and then the car launched itself forward. The world around the car shifted into grey. The Peace Division and the mountains seemed to have disappeared, but everything was going past far too fast to tell properly.

"I’m Finn," the Vegard clone said, flipping the visor down to look at them in the mirror. His eyes darted from the brothers to the road ahead, as if he was afraid to take his eyes off it. "That’s Brynjar."

"Vegard," Vegard said, reaching into the front seat to shake Finn’s hand. Finn shook absently, eyes fixed on the road. 

"Bård," Bård said, following suit.

"This we known," Brynjar said. 

"Bloody hell," Bård said. "You really _are_ Brynjar Kvam."

"That we known too."

"We had a bit of an accident in Ullern," Finn said, as though this explained everything.

"Where are you taking us?" Vegard asked.

"Away," Brynjar explained. "Forgive me, but I must lever the concentration."

"For gods’ sake don’t take his attention off the road," Finn begged. 

The brothers sat back, and buckled up. Something occurred to Vegard, then, and he felt his spirits soar. "Bård?" he said. 

"Yeah?"

Vegard couldn’t keep the grin off his face. "I have never been so happy to be accused of _attempted_ murder in all my life."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Rush's "Secret Touch" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxL7x2AHgs0


	13. Bridging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Honey bunny / On artifice / On choice / On fumes / On compulsion / Glorious food / Zoom zoom / Over the rainbow

Brynjar drove for perhaps ten minutes before slowing down. Colour suffused the world again, and Finn seemed to resume breathing. The air had a smell again, Vegard noticed, and that smell was different from the one they’d left: warmer, richer, greener. They were on an ordinary country road, thickly wooded on one side with fields on the other, at night. The trees were still bare, but the snow was mostly gone. Brynjar turned off, taking them up a little lane that led deeper into the forest. At length, the car shuddered to a stop. "Safeness," Brynjar said. "At least for tonight."

"Where are we?" Vegard pressed.

"A forest outside Vigmostad," Brynjar told him. "There are water nearby. I know it’s out of your way, but we canst gets back easily tomorrow."

"But..."

"Old roads," Finn explained, unbuckling his seatbelt with a sigh of relief. 

"Are we camping out here then?" Bård asked as he opened his door.

"I’ll build a fire," Vegard said.

"I’ll put up the tent," Bård put in.

"I will procurate dinner," Brynjar offered, getting out.

"I’ll..." Finn frowned, looking momentarily lost. "...gather firewood?"

"Good idea," Vegard said.

They were in a clearing, and Vegard hollowed out a pit far away from the trees, and used some birch bark and the flint to kindle a tiny flame, which he then fed with twigs, then small sticks, then the bigger ones that Finn kept handing him.

When the tent was up, Bård wandered over. "I thought Brynjar was doing dinner," his brother muttered. "He’s just sitting there."

"Could be he brought cans, and he’s just waiting for a fire to heat them up," Vegard offered.

"What do you think of them?"

"They saved our lives."

"True," Bård said. "It’s all just...weird. They’re not what I thought they’d be. Not at all. They'll take some getting used to." Then he got to his feet, and was off again.

With the fire made and not about to go out anytime soon, Vegard sought out Brynjar. He was, as Bård had said, at the edge of the clearing, sitting crosslegged, hands spread, palms up. "Do you have control of the dinner, Brynjar?"

He looked up at Vegard, and smiled. "Softly, softly," he singsonged. "Sit down, right where you are. Makest not a noise."

Vegard had been sitting for perhaps a minute, getting increasingly restless, when a large brown rabbit emerged from the edge of the trees, snuffling around. As Vegard watched, astonished, the rabbit crept onto Brynjar’s lap. Lifting it, he kissed its forehead, and then held it close for a little while, stroking its ears and sides. It seemed content to rest in his arms. Then, in a smooth motion, Brynjar broke its neck. 

Vegard stared at him in naked horror. Brynjar met his gaze. The blue eye was full of tears. 

Brynjar buried his face in the fur for a few moments, and then got to his feet, holding the limp body by the scruff of its neck. "Now to cleaning. Has you a knife?" Numbly, Vegard handed him the little pocket knife he carried everywhere. "My thank yous."

***

The fire was going, the tent was up, and Vegard and Brynjar were cleaning a rabbit that Brynjar had gotten god knew how, so Bård figured he might as well get to know Finn.

He walked over to where he heard crashing around in the woods. "You could probably stop now. We’ve got a good pile here"

"I want to do my fair share," Finn said.

"Can I help, then?"

"You already pitched the tent. If you want to keep me company, though...I would be honoured."

"Honoured," Bård echoed. "Why on Earth _honoured_? Trust me, we’re just guys."

"You’re..." Finn said, and then stopped.

"We’re what? I’m what?"

Finn gave him an uncomfortable shrug. "It sounds weird if I put it into words." 

"Just try. I promise, the worst I’ll do is mock you mercilessly for the rest of your life. And maybe force you to repeat it on national television."

Finn didn’t look at him. "Real. You two are real, and we’re made up. Everything about us is made up."

Bård rolled his eyes. "Right, and Vegard and I were discovered by Fridtjof Nansen? We’ve got our parents, and you’ve got...whoever made you."

"It’s not the same," Finn insisted.

"Not the same, but not better or worse either. Or more or less real." Bård looked him over carefully, the small man with Vegard’s face and haunted eyes, and all of his initial speculations about the changelings seemed cold. He remembered his brother wondering aloud whether they were people, whether they understood what was happening, whether the explosion had hurt. Of course it had. "What happened to you? In Ullern?"

"Someone set a destruction glyph on the studio. It blew up just after we got there. We were...trapped. For awhile. And then we had to wait for Brynjar to recover."

"You’re not really much like Vegard."

"No," Finn agreed. "I’m sorry."

"Don’t be. It’s an observation, not a criticism." Bård motioned with his head towards Brynjar, who had taken off his duster and was up to his wrists in gore. "And he is _nothing_ like me."

Finn looked from one to the other a few times. "No."

"What’s the deal with him? He was supposed to be me. How did he turn into Brynjar Kvam?"

"Your wives named us," Finn said. 

"Yeah, but those are just names. I mean, you’re okay."

Finn shook his head. "I’m a douchebag."

"But he’s _Brynjar_ bloody _Kvam_. _Literally_ bloody. He’s getting it all over my birthday sweater."

"We were made with a patterning protocol that makes us fulfill others’ expectations of the people we’re supposed to be mimicking. For example, if I’m your boss’ changeling, but for some reason I’m too nice, the protocol will make me crankier. We were supposed to fulfill people’s expectations of you and Vegard, but when your wives renamed us, it changed the expectations."

"But you’re okay," Bård protested. "You’re not bragging about your stuff or anything."

"I don’t have any stuff to brag about." Finn’s eyes darted from side to side. "And Brynjar got hurt worse than I did. When he healed, he didn’t really have a choice: he healed into Brynjar."

Bård dropped his voice. "That’s what happened with the eye?"

"I guess. I wanted to ask you about that: what is it that he sees with it?"

"I haven’t the faintest idea," Bård said with a frown. "It was never part of my idea of the character. Have you asked him?"

"Yes."

"And...?"

"You’re right," Finn said. "This is probably enough firewood."

"Finn?"

"He sees into things," Finn said tightly, with a little sniff. "He sees things he shouldn’t. Excuse me, Bård, I really have to get this back to the pile."

***

Vegard pronounced the rabbit cooked, and used his knife--held over the flame after Brynjar had returned it--to divide it into four portions. Three of them speared it on sticks to eat; Vegard’s survival kit from Fjærland had come with a genius little thing that came apart to become a knife, fork, or spoon, and he was determined to use that.

"Let's us give thanks," Brynjar intoned, and Bård and Vegard exchanged a look of dismay. They glanced over at Finn, but he was giving them an I’m-just-as-surprised-as-anyone look. Then Brynjar said, "She who gave her life for this meal I has named Honning. She was a fine rabbit in her prime, she loved all of her litters very much, and her sacrifice nourish us this night. Thank you, Honning."

"Thank you, Honning," Vegard echoed with feeling.

"Yeah, thanks," Bård said, sounding uneasy.

"Thanks," Finn said. 

Honning was very tough, and tasted a lot like chicken. Nonetheless, this was a life that had been in the world and wasn't anymore, because of their need, and Vegard worked hard to appreciate her.

While they ate, Vegard and Bård filled the changelings in on their adventures, and their plans. "If you’d shown up a day ago," Bård said, "we would have said, Great, let’s all go home."

"No," Brynjar said, at the same time that Finn said, "I’m sorry."

"And probably gotten everyone killed," Vegard said forcefully. "We thought we were highly-suspicious-characters-to-keep-an-eye-on-and-possibly-bring-in-for-rough-questioning-at-the-slightest-possible-provocation wanted, not send-a-team-of-men-out-and-ride-through-an-avalanche-to-apprehend-us wanted." He fell silent, then, thinking that maybe the Peace Division had been right, about him at least.

"Vegard," Brynjar said, so sharply that Finn and Bård both glanced up from their dinner in surprise. He continued, more gently, "Her name is Dulcinea Selinael. She are bruised and her gadfly were damaged beyond repair. Doctors caution she may lose the little toe on her right foot, but I think not. Her grandmother was a general in the Victory of the Light. Her brother is a dálki officer. She herself is a good person who likes cross-stitch, axolotls, and driving very fast. She rode into the avalanche because your daring escape in Mosjøen hath leaded to media reports that you can fool glamour disruptors, and she thought it were an illusion you had woven."

"We can fool glamour disruptors?" Vegard echoed with incredulous laughter. "I wore a hat."

"You are both victims of the same patternings imposed on your lives," Brynjar said. "You are both guilty of errors in judgement. You should both learning your lessons and thanking your luck, but it is you alone I tell because you are here and she is not."

"How do you know all this?" Vegard demanded.

Brynjar met Vegard’s brown eyes with his mismatched ones. "I sees it."

"So," Finn said into the uncomfortable silence that followed, "what do we do?"

Bård and Vegard exchanged a long look. Finally, Bård said, "I think we’re going with the original plan. Go to Asgard, report back, and hope that the truth of what is happening there is enough to take the wind out of the Bright Court’s sails, at least enough to call off the Peace Division."

Finn frowned. "Like blackmail?"

"That’s no good," Bård said. "People are suffering. If we find out a secret that would make it stop, you couldn’t offer us anything that would make us keep quiet."

"It’s a pretty bad plan," Vegard admitted, "but it’s the only plan we’ve got."

"I can gets you to Bifrost at least," Brynjar told them. "I am not certain that the Rainbow Bridge accepts motor vehicles, but I might be able to gets you across as well."

"We’ll gladly take you up on that part," Bård said, "because I don’t think we can get back there without the Peace Division noticing."

"But we aren’t asking you to do more," Vegard told them. 

"It’s what we’re for," Finn said. 

"It’s stupid and dangerous," Bård countered. "If in your heart of hearts you want to help, we’d be glad of it, but you have no obligation."

Brynjar’s voice was very quiet. "I thinking you doth not understand, Bård. Our obligation is infused into us with this form and this mind and this life. We were to obey your wives. It are a weak compulsion, so that we are not slaves or robots, but it are a compulsion nonetheless."

Finn’s voice shook. "What else would we do? What else could we do? If you send us away, what’s left? What is there?"

"But if you stay with us...we can barely keep ourselves safe," Vegard said. "I’ve already had to do terrible things. You seem like really nice guys. I don’t want to be responsible for something happening to you."

"I’m with you," Finn said stubbornly, and looked to Brynjar.

"Do not kidding yourselves, Ylvisåkers," Brynjar singsonged, looking at each of them levelly. "We are not free to go away, to choose to keep ourselves safe. If my life were wholly my own, would I heroically offer my services? I cannot says, and do not ask it of me, for the people who sought your help thought the situation desperate enough to introduce compulsion. And I know you did not choose our making either, but you has already profited from it, so think not to send us away, and soothe not your troubled consciences by asking us to pretend we have a choice."

"I am sorry for that," Bård told him.

"They shouldn’t have," Vegard added. 

"It are what it are," Brynjar said mildly. "I am with you, and regardless of the reason, in truth I am not displeased."

***

The tent slept only three; one of them would need to stay in the car. At one point Vegard turned to mention this to Brynjar, and found the man curled up next to the fire, with his duster draped over him as a blanket, already snoring.

Finn motioned him over, and Vegard got up and tiptoed around the fire to sit by him. "Brynjar's still healing," Finn explained. "And travelling really seems to take it out of him."

"Yeah?" Vegard said, and then motioned with his chin to Bård, propped up snoring against the woodpile and using a log as a pillow. "What's his excuse?"

Finn chuckled, and then sobered abruptly. "I have apologies to make to you."

"Finn, if they ordered you away, I don't see what you were supposed to do about it. We'll poke our snouts in at Asgard and find out what's really going on, and I know what we said, but we’ll try not to make it too dangerous. And then...I think home for dinner is perhaps optimistic, but..."

"Brynjar can drive," Finn assured him. "It won't take long."

"If we do get ourselves arrested, though," Vegard said, "they’ll understand about you, right? I mean, you won’t be accessories to something you didn’t have a choice about?"

"Not accessories," Finn said. "We’ll be contraband. We’ll be seized and impounded."

"But that’s not...that’s not...how can they...?"

Finn answered with a resigned shrug. "Anyway, that's not what I have to apologize for. We met some fans on the train, and...I pretended to be you."

Vegard was immediately on high alert. "Yes?"

"I'm sorry."

He felt dread seeping into the pit of his stomach. "What did you do, Finn?"

"Accepted hot chocolate. Asked them to sit with us. Brynjar was hurt, and I was scared, and I was so lonely..."

Vegard took his hand away from his mouth and said, more insistently, "Finn, what did you do?"

"Let them take pictures, too, but nothing will come of that. Answered a weird question about gyroscopes. Tried not to say too much. Just listened, mostly. I am sorry." 

Vegard waited for more, but no more was forthcoming. "That's it?"

Finn nodded. He was hunched over, staring at his lap.

"You didn't...take advantage of anything? Or anyone?"

"They brought us hot chocolate."

"What about Brynjar?"

"Some for him too. It was cold by the time he drank it, though, because we didn't want anyone to see how badly hurt he was. They were very nice people. You have very nice fans. I didn't tell them I was Vegard Ylvisåker. But they called me by your name and I couldn't think of a way to convince them I wasn't, not with a Bård lookalike right there with me."

Vegard sat for a little while, processing this, running his fingers back and forth over his upper lip. "It's weird," he said finally, "but I can't see how I could ask you to handle it differently. I can't even say don't let it happen again, because you were meant to be mistaken for us. Just don’t...don’t--and these are my rules for me too--don’t let anyone get hurt because of it, and don’t do anything illegal, and don’t take advantage." He offered Finn a smile. "But if you have the chance to make someone’s life better by being me, then be me, with my blessing." 

"Thank you," Finn said huskily.

Something about the quality of Finn’s voice made Vegard look at him again. "You know what? Just a moment." He went into the tent, and fished around. "Come here, Finn."

Finn got to his feet, stumbling a little, and joined him at the tent.

"Shoes off...there." When Finn was kneeling inside the tent, Vegard pulled out his sleeping bag, and draped it over the changeling’s shoulders, and started zipping it before Finn could protest. "Okay, now lie down."

"What?"

"You’re exhausted. You’re making my exhausted face."

"But this is your sleeping bag."

"I’ve been in the tent for days. I could do with a change. Lie down now, so I can zip up the lower half."

Finn looked as if he might argue, but then he blinked--it was a very long blink--and lay down. "Thank you," he said foggily.

"Is there anything I can get for you?" Vegard asked, as he struggled to get the zipper around a corner. 

The only answer he got was a sleepy, unintelligible murmur.

***

_Hello, Maria and Helene. Excuse for news. This is Brynjar Kvam. Home news: Sources close to the Ylvisåker household indicate that yes, Helene, that are most certainly an ear infection, but t'will wait until the morrow. Away news: the quest to find Asgard and demand answers from Odin himself have been joined by Finn Weber and Brynjar Kvam. Quest leaders Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker plans to bypass the basic theologistical questions such as, "Why are we here?", "What is our purpose?", and "What is the meaning of suffering?", and jump straight to, "Why are you endorsing openly bigoted political candidates?" Everyone sends love, but I am the only one who can send you my velvety delicious voice. You have heard our news, and I have been Brynjar Kvam._

***

Bård’s neck woke him. He had a moment of disorientation before remembering where he was. Vigmostad. The camp was silent. Someone had tucked his sleeping bag around him.

The fire was down to coals. Sitting on the other side of it, watching him quietly, was Brynjar Kvam. 

"Hi, Brynjar," Bård said, sitting up.

"Hello, Bård."

Bård cast around for something, anything to say. "I heard you got banged up pretty bad in Ullern."

"Yes."

"I’m sorry."

Brynjar frowned consideringly. Bård was shocked to see him run two fingers across his upper lip. "I’m not," Brynjar said finally, lowering his hand. "Without it, we would not has found you. We would not has had the car, or travelled the old roads. The Peace Division would be torturing you right now."

"Well now, we don’t--"

"I saw their thoughts." Brynjar grimaced. "Also, one of them were aroused by the prospect in a very unreconstructed way, but I think the organization is aware of her proclivities and wouldst not have allowed her to witness or take part."

"So...your eye shows you what people are thinking?"

"Amongst other things." Brynjar rose from his position in front of the fire, and circled it until he was next to Bård. "May I?"

"Of course," Bård said, motioning for him to sit. 

Brynjar knelt behind him instead. Bård intuited what was going to happen just before he felt thumbs--one oddly weak--digging into the knot just under his shoulder blade. The thumbs worked their way up, releasing knots, one always working harder than the other. 

Bård sighed with relief. Then something unpleasant occurred to him. "Are you doing that because you have to, or--?"

"It are a much older compulsion, and far more benigner. I sees a person in pain and has the means to help."

"Well, thanks for that," Bård said. "You’re nearly as good as Vegard."

"It helps that I also sees the knots."

"And thoughts, and old roads. Like, what is all that? What does that eye see?"

Brynjar gave him a half smile. "It depend on what I look at."

"All right, what do you see when you look at me?"

"Many things, Bård."

"Pick one."

Brynjar considered. "Painted horses with bared teeth and rolling eyes. There are gay colours and flashing lights and dizzying motion. A slightly out-of-tune calliope. Thy chest tightens, thy breath quickens, thy bowels clench. You know it is not rational. Knowing it is not rational does not help."

"Jesus Christ," Bård said, with a shuddering exhalation. 

"I think not." Brynjar dug the stronger thumb into a final knot, releasing it. "Let us rest, Bård. You should be sleeping on a proper pillow, and we has a big Ragnarok tomorrow."

"What?"

"A pillow, to keeping your neck at a good angle."

"No, after that."

"A big day tomorrow? We are going to meeting the gods, after all, are we not?" Bård noticed, for the first time, that Brynjar was slurring his words slightly. 

"Is that what you said?"

Brynjar gave him a sheepish half-smile. "If not, it is what I meant. I were not paying proper attention. My brain...are telling me it need to rest."

Bård froze for a moment. "Of course," he said then. He unzipped the tent, saw that it had only one occupant, and motioned Brynjar inside. Brynjar took off his shoes, drew his sock feet up under the duster, and curled up on the floor. 

Bård cast around for something to make Brynjar more comfortable, but before he could find anything, he heard the man’s breathing lighten. In the end, he lay directly on his sleeping mat, with his neck pillow, and spread the sleeping bag over both of them. The weather was warmer here than it had been in Padjelanta, and he was perfectly comfortable.

***

In the morning, they struck camp and drove into the town of Mandal, where the brothers had performed last summer. Bård and Vegard, reasoning that this was an excellent red herring, got cash. Then they filled up the car. "You know what, though?" Bård said as they pulled out of the gas station, with Vegard driving.

"What?" Finn said.

" _Real food._ "

Vegard halted, turned, and drove the car straight into the parking lot of a hotel he knew had a decent breakfast buffet. 

"Don’t worry," Bård said from the back seat. "We’re covering this one."

"Thank you," breathed Finn, who had been looking profoundly uncomfortable.

"Yes, thank you," said Brynjar. 

They entered at the restaurant. Just as a distressed-looking maitre d’ came bustling towards them, it occurred to Vegard that he hadn’t showered or shaved in five days. "I’m sorry, sirs. None of you are...really..."

"We do have to clean up," Vegard admitted. He’d been chilly in the car to begin with, but the rising sun had turned the vehicle into an oven, and he felt sweaty and grimy and stinky.

"Of course." Bård pulled a sheaf of kroner from his wallet. "We’ll get ourselves a double room, make the necessary preparations, and be back."

They operated in shifts, one occupying the shower while the other three luxuriated on real beds. Bård called the first shower, and while his hair was still dripping wet, dozed off immediately afterward, catching up on the sleep that he’d missed while roughing it. Vegard, who needed to take the extra time to shave (unlike Finn, whose five o’clock shadow had lasted for two solid weeks of five o’clocks), went last of all. When he got out of the bathroom, drying off his hair with a clean t-shirt, and saw his brother and both changelings fast asleep, he surrendered and stretched out next to Bård. He would give himself five minutes. 

By the time they woke up, two hours later, the hotel was no longer serving breakfast, but there was a lunch buffet. Now hungrier than ever, Vegard and Bård piled their plates high with smørbrød, salad, and cold meats. Vegard had a separate plate with cherry cheesecake and a berry tart on it, and even Bård grabbed some baklava and a brownie. 

Finn and Brynjar had taken less at the outset, but they kept going back for more. "That’s trip number four," Vegard observed in wonderment. 

"I think they’ve had a terrible time," Bård said softly. "I think they’ve been hungry."

"We should have taken them to a hotel last night, and fed them, and made sure they had proper beds."

After a long moment, Bård said, "No."

"Right," Vegard realized. "Because we would be using a bank card, and we could probably get away with it today, but not if we were staying put for a whole night." He frowned. "That nap might have been pushing it."

Finn and Brynjar returned then, with plates full of fruit and desserts. "We hate to rush you, but we’re rushing you," Bård said. "Eat up and let’s get out of here."

***

Abatrael was still having trouble with what to make of his men’s report that the Ylvisåkers had been picked up in a red car that had simply vanished. Translating anything bigger than a horse was physically impossible. Well, Leonora Findael had managed a Volkswagen Beetle once, but she’d spent the next two weeks in a coma and it had ended her career. The red Mazda had to have been an illusion, and a bad one, seeing as the drivers had appeared to be the Ylvisåkers themselves, but a full night and a morning of searching had turned up exactly no traces of glamour, and many traces of a car that had just driven off into nothing.

A junior officer knocked on the door. "Sir, we have reports that the brothers’ bank cards were just used in Mandal."

"You’re kidding."

"No."

"They can translate a whole car?"

"It looks like it," the officer admitted. 

"Attempt number five," Abatrael sighed. "As always, don’t trust your eyes. Don’t trust anything."

***

They had just left Mandal behind them, with Brynjar at the wheel, when a high-pitched zipping whine filled the air. "Gadflies!" Finn cried, from where he sat in the back seat. Brynjar did not react at all. Vegard watched the hovering vehicles converge and fill the rearview mirror. The car was alone on the road, and Vegard wondered what he would see if he popped out his lenses. Probably nothing at all, but this seemed like a bad time to check.

"Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker," a voice blared, "you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, conspiracy to sow discord, attempted murder, unlawful tampering with police equipment, unauthorized use of glamour technology, destruction of Peace Division property, disturbing the tranquility, and resisting arrest."

Throughout this, Brynjar had kept driving at a reasonable speed. Now, suddenly, he hit the brakes and hauled hard on the steering wheel, and the car spun around to face the gadflies of the Peace Division. With a wicked grin at Vegard, he tromped on the gas, and let loose a battle cry. This harmonized with the three shouts of terror from his passengers as the gadflies loomed. And then the world was grey.

Vegard forced himself to loose his white-knuckled hold on the dashboard. He glanced in the rearview mirror, and saw Finn and Bård clinging to each other’s arms like a couple of children. Bård eased off Finn’s arm with an embarrassed smile. Finn gave him a look of reproach and held on, and with a glance at Vegard, Bård put a comforting hand back on Finn’s shoulder.

After some time staring into the grey, watching the forests and mountains and rivers and lakes slide by at impossible speeds, Vegard checked the dashboard clock. It said 77.94. He said, in a voice that sounded as flat and unnatural as the silence around them, "It feels like it’s taking longer this time."

"Naturifically," Brynjar said. "Sarek National Park is part of your world. Bifrost is another order of things entirely. Even for walkers it are hidden and approachable from but one way only. For driving it is very tricky."

The grey got darker and darker, approaching black, and the shapes outside of the car got increasingly strange. Vegard thought back to the völvà’s instructions, and wondered what any of this would have been like on foot. Then there was a point of light in the darkness, and in the light, shafts of brilliant colour. The point grew, slowly, until it filled the world around them. "I thinks I can take this," Brynjar said. "I’m going to take it." He jerked the wheel around, and the car veered, and then there was nothing at all under the wheels, and dizzying prismatic light all around. 

"No no no no no no no no..." Vegard breathed, staring into the colours. And then he felt a hand squeeze his shoulder, and when he looked into the rearview mirror, he saw that it was Finn’s.

The trip over Bifrost took longer than the rest of it, the clock on the dash registering impossible numbers and the occasional four-letter word, but gradually Vegard became aware that the light was getting brighter, the colours washing out. The last thing he saw before throwing an arm over his eyes was alarm registering on Brynjar’s face. Then the car swerved and braked suddenly, and all four of them were thrown forwards against the seatbelts. 

Brynjar cut the engine and slumped forward on the steering wheel with a shuddering exhalation. "Near thing," he said faintly.

The other three exchanged a glance. Finn slowly unclenched his fingers from each brother’s arm, and flexed his hands.

They were in a meadow, under blue sky. A goat wandered in front of the car, turned and bawled at them, and kept wandering. 

Vegard undid his seatbelt, and opened the door. He glanced at the others. Brynjar was still sitting with his forehead on the steering wheel. Finn looked anxious. Bård gave him a little nod, and Vegard stepped out.

Asgard appeared to be in the midst of a perfect June day. The sun was warm, the air sweet with the scent of growing. They were on a dirt track that cut through the meadow, and on either side were clusters of purple heather, yellow buttercups, and white daisies and Queen Anne’s lace, nodding in a gentle breeze.

On the other side of the meadow was a magnificent wooden building. It looked like a stave church, but it was bigger than any stave church he’d ever seen, and the logs appeared to be gargantuan. 

Behind him, the back doors opened, and Finn and Bård climbed out shakily. Finn took a couple of deep breaths, and then he walked to the driver's side door and pulled it open, and helped Brynjar out. Brynjar went to his knees amidst the wildflowers. "Leaves me here," he said when Vegard came around to help him. "I might kissing the ground a little."

After a few minutes and a granola bar, Brynjar let himself be helped to his feet. He opened the car door again, and fished out his stick to prop himself up. "Both eyes seeing the same thing," he said wonderingly. 

They walked, leaning on each other, Brynjar leaning heavily on his stick, up the dirt track to the wooden building. On the way, they passed what appeared to be the ruins of others, mostly grown over. The remaining building was further away than it had first looked, and even more massive. There were no people; only birds, and insects, and goats.

Bård broke away from the others to kick up his heels. " _We’re off to visit Asgard!_ " he sang.

" _And angrily chastise the gods,_ " Vegard put in, linking his arm with his brother’s. 

Finn surprised them by taking Bård’s other arm and singing, " _We drove across Bifrost and nigh got our lives lost but triumphed against the odds._ "

Brynjar linked arms with Finn and sang, " _I thought I could no longer improvise, but it seems that I can and I’m quite surprised._ "

" _You guys, you guys, you guys, you guys, you guuuuuuuyyyyyyys,_ " they chorused, " _We need to make Odin realize!_ " And then they dissolved into laughter. 

Brynjar stumbled as he laughed, and his left knee gave way, spilling him into the dirt. Finn pulled him to his feet. "I will asking," Brynjar sighed, "for a brain."

"And I guess I should see about a heart," Finn said.

"You’ve got plenty of heart," Vegard protested. "You need courage."

Finn shot him a wry look. "Do you have any idea how brave I’m being right now?"

Bård and Vegard exchanged a glance. "Which one of us gets to be Dorothy?" Bård demanded.

Vegard extended a hand. "Thumb wrestle!" After a mighty contest, he lost. "Wait," he said. "Does that mean that I’m Dorothy, or you are?"

"You can be Dorothy," Bård said generously. "We already know you can rock a blue dress. And I’ll be Toto. I can sing about Africa with real authority. Or I’ll be Dorothy, and you can be a munchkin."

"I’ll be Toto," Vegard said. "I’ll find you the man behind the curtain."

"This coming from a wizard," Brynjar pointed out. 

"I am not a wizard. I just..." Vegard trailed off. Then he pointed. "Just over that hill." The great building was close, and they hurried for it, Vegard walking a little ahead of the others. There were great oaken doors, fitted with brass. He lifted the knocker--it was the size of his head--and let it fall. The noise sounded hollow and lonely, and even in the warm sunshine, in company, Vegard couldn’t suppress a shudder. Then he lifted the latch, and pushed the door open, and walked into Odin’s hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing (for Brynjar's driving): Yves V & Dani L. Mebius' "Chained" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvAldipJQ4I


	14. The Deification of Brynjar Kvam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Huginn’s revenge / Is she strange? Listen, fool: Odin’s horse is nightmare fuel / Hvem kan slå Odin? / Ylvissmol / The man behind the curtain / We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to announce Ragnarok / Who's afraid? / The changing of the gods

Something dark swooped down from above, cawing and pecking. Vegard yelped and flailed and swore, and Bård almost told him to just calm down and it would leave him alone. A moment later, though, he was glad he hadn’t: the thing was on him with no provocation whatsoever, and he felt claws digging at his scalp. A sharp beak made as if to peck at his eyes, stopping short every time. Then, with a final nip at his earlobe, it was gone in a flurry of feathers.

Dazed and bleeding, Bård turned his eyes upward, to the rafters of the great building, chilly after the warmth of the sun outside. Shadows danced in the firelight. An enormous black bird stood there, hopping from foot to foot and looking pleased with itself. "A crow?"

"A raven," Vegard corrected dully, blood trickling from a gouge near his hairline. "Crows are smaller and sleeker and less croaky, plus you can tell by the shape of the tail."

"Your pardon," said the man who sat at the head of a great feasting table spanning the length of the room. "I don’t know what’s got into Huginn."

"It is not what got into Huginn that trouble him," said Brynjar, "so much as what got into Bård and Vegard." All eyes, save perhaps Huginn’s, turned to him quizzically, but he did not elaborate. 

Even if their grey-maned host hadn’t been instantly familiar, the tapestry behind him was. To cement things, he said, "I am Odin, the Allfather, Mightiest of the Gods and the Ruler of Asgard. Be welcome in my hall."

"Thank you," Bård said. 

Two wolves approached from behind the table and started nosing at the visitors. "Geri, Freki, behave," Odin barked.

Brynjar set his stick against the wall and held out his hands, and the wolves went to him. Propping himself up against the wall, he petted them and scratched behind their ears, and grinned.

"What is _that_?" Finn squeaked, pointing to a shape that had appeared from the far, darkened corner of the hall. 

Vegard gave it a long, considering look. "Sleipnir, I think. Odin’s eight-legged mare." 

"She’s not at all like in the pictures," Bård observed. As he watched, the horse scuttled over to them, looking them over with eight mild brown eyes. Vegard held out a hand. Sleipnir extended her thorax and her long neck, and lipped gently at his palm. 

"Good girl," Vegard singsonged. 

"We’re Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker," Bård said, indicating himself and his brother. "And this is Finn Weber, and this is Brynjar Kvam." 

"Well met, Bård and Vegard and Finn and Brynjar. What brings you to Valaskjolf, the poorest of my halls?" 

Vegard, now petting Sleipnir’s nose, said, "There’s a video going around, of you endorsing Lirikael Vinael for the election next fall." 

"Yes," Odin said. "A nice young man. He approached me, and told me of the plight of the lios alfar. Normally their welfare is the business of my brother Frey, but he is absent, and so it falls to me. Even so, I cautioned him that I would not directly intervene. The world has changed, and is no longer so friendly to gods. Why, what of it?" 

"He’s trying to imprison us," Bård explained. "We haven’t done anything wrong. He also supports policies that have hurt a lot of our friends, and now he’s after us. It’s like he’s got this story of how things are, in his head, where he’s the hero, and he’s determined to play it out no matter who gets hurt." 

"Surely every man has the right to be the hero of his own story," Odin said gravely. 

"Well, yes," said Vegard, "but it becomes a bit uncomfortable when out of the blue you find yourself cast as the villain." 

"We’ve been running from him and his goons for weeks," Bård said. "We never wanted any of this. We miss our families." 

"Mm-hm? And what do you want from me?" 

Finn spoke up for the first time. "I had heard that the gods care about justice, but what’s happening to Bård and Vegard, and the rest of Norway for that matter, at the hands of Lirikael Vinael is not justice." 

Odin rose from his seat. "Justice is what I say it is, little man. You question my right to help who I see fit?" 

"Whom," Vegard corrected under his breath. 

Odin wheeled on him. "You challenge a god, do you? Very well. None of you shall leave this hall alive unless you can prove yourselves wiser and wilier than I." 

Bård closed his eyes. "Vegard," he sighed. 

"The first contest is flyting, and I will do you an additional kindness, little men: if you prove to be a genuine challenge, I will make cups out of your skulls. I can guarantee that my mead is the best thing they will ever have held." 

"Oooh," said Bård, stepping forward. "I’m impressed. See this? This is my impressed face." 

"Your impressed face," Odin echoed. "And here I thought you were just trying to look stupid so I’d feel sorry for you." 

"Yeah, well the tenth century called," Finn said, coming to stand at Bård’s side. "It didn’t say it wanted anything; it mostly just wept inconsolably." 

"I’m sure that if I called and all that answered was a hamster, I would weep insonsolably too," Odin told him. 

"Oi!" Vegard cried. "He’s the douchebag; _I’m_ the hamster." 

Odin made a face, and leaned closer to Finn. "Is he for real?" 

Finn rolled his eyes. "Asks the _god_." 

These didn’t feel quite good, yet, but one had to allow for a warmup. Bård decided to go for something more ambitious. "Big empty place you got here, Odin. Where’s the missus? Were you a bit too high-strung for her? She opted for someone a little more..." He switched to English. "... _low-key_?" In Norwegian, he said, "Oooh, my brother thought that was below the belt. But it’s a relief, isn’t it, to _finally_ have something happening there?" 

"I’d call you a terrible human being," Odin said, "but I despise redundancy." 

"Well, and you’re not much of a god," Finn shot back. "Up top they talk about a guy who could turn water into wine. Did you ever manage the transformation of fluids? And it doesn’t count if you touch it with your kidneys." 

"Calle and I turned water into beer, once," Vegard offered. "It took a long time though, and we had to add malt, hops, and yeast." 

Odin ignored him, and sniffed. "Please. That pretender hung for a lousy three days. I managed _nine_." 

With great compassion, Finn said, "It’s okay. It just takes some people longer." 

Odin raised an eyebrow. "Indeed? And you speak from authority? Hands up, everyone who attained wisdom by hanging from an ash for nine days with a gaping wound in his side." He raised a muscled arm. 

Brynjar, looking up from the wolves, raised a considerably skinnier one. With the other, he elbowed Finn, who also--with a look of dawning realization--put up his hand. 

"Guys, not funny," Bård hissed. 

"Oh, it wasn't," Finn agreed. 

"I learned that it hurts muchly," Brynjar added. "I learned breathing, shrieking, waiting, moaning, hoping, hurting, pleading, hanging, crying, dangling, begging, enduring, and shutting up." 

"I learned that I can do it," Finn said. "And whatever else happens in my life, no one can take that away from me." 

"I see," said Odin. "Impressive. And did either of you sacrifice an eye? Let’s see the hands. No?" 

Brynjar raised his hand. "Yes." His grey eye met Odin's blue one. Odin was the first to look away. 

Odin shook his head. "It doesn’t matter, really. I’m still the master of wisdom." 

"And we’re the masters of foolishness," Bård rejoined. 

"Quite so. Do you know what I did to the _last_ master of foolishness to enter these halls?" 

"Yeah," Bård said. "You endorsed him for political office." 

The god snorted. "Well done, gentlemen. I grant you this round: you are, as you said, the masters of foolishness. Now let us have the measure of your knowledge. First answer me well, if your wisdom avails: at the dawn of time, whence came the realm you call Midgard?" 

"Fourteen billion years ago..." Vegard began, and then looked like he was casting around for the right language. 

"...the universe begat itself by speaking its own name," Brynjar continued, stepping away from Geri and Freki and taking his place at Vegard’s side. 

"Everything blew up," Vegard said. "It still expands outward at the speed of light." 

" _Wrong_!" Odin thundered triumphantly. But then one of the ravens hopped onto his shoulder, and nibbled his earlobe. The god’s eyes widened, and he grimaced. "All right. Muninn tells me that I have to accept that. But work on your metre. It’s pathetic. Next answer me well, if your wisdom avails: whence came the earth and the sky?" 

"Out of Ymir’s flesh was fashioned the solar system," said Brynjar. 

"A great star went all supernova," Vegard supplied, as Bård counted frantically on his fingers. "And the pieces became the sun and all the planets. Gravity made it clump together." 

Odin beckoned Muninn closer, and listened. Then he said, "Third answer me well, if your wisdom avails: whence came the day and the night?" 

"The Earth spins on its axis ev’ry twenty-four hours," Vegard said. "The half that faces the sun gets day. Night happens on the side of the planet turned away. Earth also revolves. Plus there’s tilt, too." 

Muninn nibbled Odin’s ear again, and Odin said, "Fourth answer me well, if your wisdom avails: whence come winter and summer?" 

"The tilt and revolution, that I mentioned before," Vegard said. "We tilt far from the sun for winter, even though we orbit closer in the winter months. The tilt away makes it cold." 

"For us," Bård added, putting up two more fingers as he spoke. 

"Fifth answer me well, if your wisdom avails: whence come the gods?" 

Vegard’s eyes widened, and even though this had been covered in the Eddas, he shot a panicked look at Brynjar. Brynjar took another step forward, still limping badly. And his own eyes got very wide indeed. "Odin Allfather, you are as much a god as I. The Bright Court has never told you that. Whatever came before, _your_ theogony’s a lie; your birthplace was an infusion vat." 

"A rhyme, finally," Odin said, thumping the table. Then he frowned, and turned to Muninn, who bobbed his head in affirmation. 

"The Bright Court _made_ you? And then got you to endorse Lirikael Vinael for office?" Bård shrilled. 

"It is worse than cynicism, this besetting flaw. They thought necessary all they wrought. Alight with righteousness, they bent and twisted the law: tortured a changeling into their god." 

"That one was a bit of a stretch," Vegard murmured, and then his head snapped up. "So it was the Bright Court who made you, and then they hung you up on the ash tree and put your eye out, not to make you look like Odin, but in the honest-to-goodness belief that it would actually make you _into_ Odin?" 

"Muninn says that is so," Odin said heavily. "I have no memory of choosing to hang or to lose my eye, but I have a full memory of the lore, and I assumed..." He shook his grizzled head, and sank back in his oaken chair, looking stricken. "This is humiliating. Are you going to kill me?" 

"No!" Vegard cried. "We just wanted to find the truth. And maybe ask you to call him off us." 

Brynjar opened his mouth to speak, and Bård said, "You can quit rhyming now. The last one was a bit rubbish anyway." 

"I were about to say," Brynjar said, with great dignity, "that latter idea were predicated on the belief that Vinael found a god and would listen to him. That are no longer a certainty. A man capable of the moral gymnastics necessary to do what have been done here will not be turned aside, and will steadfastly believing himself to be justified in any atrocity." 

"But he is a good man, a pious man," Odin protested. "He has, in my company, shown himself to be clever and gracious and goodhearted." Muninn croaked, and nibbled Odin’s earlobe. "Muninn is right. Divine is as divine does. Be welcome in my hall, brothers. Feast and drink and rest, and I will tell Lirikael Vinael that you are under my protection." 

"Well--" Vegard began. 

Brynjar elbowed him and hissed, "Homesick or no, you dost _not_ refuse a god’s hospitality." 

"You honour us," Bård said, with a little bow. "Where do we sit?" 

Odin arrayed them on his right side at the head table. He flung out an arm, and great plates of meat and bowls of fruit and flagons of mead appeared before them. "This answers so many questions," he sighed. "I wondered where the other Æsir were. I thought, perhaps, away on some quest." Muninn croaked again, and Odin laughed bitterly. "He says that changelings are expensive. He says that it was good to have company in Asgard again, and they didn’t have the heart to tell me." 

"They?" Bård said. 

Odin’s look took in the wolves, the ravens, and Sleipnir, who had wandered back to the far end of the hall, out of the firelight. She was hanging upside down from the rafters, delicately eating from a bundle of hay suspended by a thread. "They have been here, waiting." Muninn croaked again, and Odin amended, "All except Huginn. He ran into a spot of trouble on a flight a few years back, and recovered only shortly before I returned. Came. Was put here." He made a face, and took a giant swallow of mead. 

From the vantage point of where they sat, they could see that mounted over the great fireplace was a flatscreen monitor, easily six feet wide. Odin reached under the table now, and the screen came to life, showing a Skype window. There was only one contact number. Odin clicked it. It rang, and was picked up. 

Bård realized that he had seen Lirikael Vinael before, although he couldn’t think where. He was a young lios alfr. Blond, of course. Handsome. Under other circumstances, Bård might have found himself instinctively liking him. He glanced over at Vegard. There was dismay and sorrow on his brother’s face. "Lord Odin," Vinael said, bowing his head. "What a pleasant surprise! I am honoured by your summons, and place myself at your disposal." 

"Lirikael Vinael," Odin said, "you have been a steadfast companion and a worthy servant, and I have welcomed our talks. However, this day I have had visitors who tell me that the Bright Court, perhaps unwittingly, has acted at the expense of the innocent." 

"Goodness," Vinael said, eyes widening slightly. "We mustn’t have that. But--visitors?" 

Odin reached onto the table, behind a bowl of grapes, and angled a webcam towards Vegard and Bård. Before the god could move the camera to take in Finn and Brynjar, though, Vinael made a strangled noise, and jolted as if electrified. 

"Lord Odin..." 

Odin angled the webcam back towards himself. "They came to me because they have been hounded, and they have done nothing to warrant it." 

"You believed them?" Vinael spluttered. "They consort with svartalfar. They conspire to bring down the Bright Court." 

Odin shot the brothers a dubious look. "Is that so?" 

"We don’t want anyone brought down," Bård clarified. "But we don’t want anyone held down, either. I know what your tapestry shows, but the svartalfar we’ve met have been overwhelmingly kind and decent people." 

"All we ever did was stop them being slaughtered," Vegard added. "I don’t understand how that’s political, but somehow it got interpreted that way." 

"Svartalfar," Odin mused, brows knit in consternation. "Wicked sprites that I punished for...wickedness. In the tunnels they are well enough, but when they break out, they are a scourge." 

Brynjar brought a fist down on the table. "And how wouldst thou feelest if that were you, Allfather? If by accident of birth you are told you you must spending your life to serve and support a populace that treats you as less than others, and then tell you your hardship is your own doing?" 

"When he talks about bringing down the Bright Court," Finn added, "he _means_ giving others the same rights as the lios alfar. Go on, ask Muninn." 

Muninn let out a couple of croaks, but it was Huginn who flew down and nibbled vigorously on Odin’s ear. "I...need to think about this," Odin said. 

"Allfather," Vinael cried, sounding crushed. "Don’t let them turn you. Don’t fall prey to the dark one’s enchantments." He gestured wildly to Vegard. "He has cracked the Seal of Luotettavuus." 

"I have not! Bård and I told the truth about not doing something." 

"He has devised a glamour that fooled our best truth detectors in Mosjøen!" 

Vegard looked pained. "I wore a _hat_." 

Muninn made harsh noises at Odin. If Bård didn’t know better, he would swear the raven was laughing. 

"Vinael, that is enough," Odin said, kindly but firmly. "I have decided nothing. I have taken no action. I have determined only to think." 

"So be it, Allfather," Vinael said heavily. "I would go, now." 

"Go and be well," Odin said, and Vinael cut the connection. 

The god turned to the others. "I don’t know what to make of that. I don’t know what to make of any of this. Do you really defend the svartalfar?" 

"We don’t know much of anything about this community, or the history, or anything," Vegard said, "except that they’re people, and they deserve to be treated like people." 

"I have to think," Odin said again. 

Bård nodded. "That’s the most we can ask of you." 

"I find it curious and a mite troubling, though, that when I say I will think, you are gladdened and he is devastated." 

"He didn’t sound happy," Bård observed, "but he’s a grownup. I’m sure he can put on his man-panties and find a way to cope." 

"He didn’t sound like he would call off the Peace Division," Finn said. 

"No," Bård agreed. "But if Odin has withdrawn his endorsement, they might not be as willing to act as his own personal goon squad. It’s down to what he can do to us personally." 

"Homemade or not," Vegard said to Odin around a mouthful of berries, "you _are_ his god. What’s he going to be able to do about it?" 

"Yeah, never ask that," Bård said. "It never turns out well." 

***

Televisions had been a luxury item among the elves for decades--a sign that you were so well off that you could spend money on a device that gave you access to the strange thoughts and exotic activities of humans, and no one else. At the turn of the century, perhaps five percent of elven and Underjordiske homes had had a television, and ninety-five percent of those were the upper echelons of the Bright Court.

Kai Fjelltop’s glamour filters had changed everything. Now there were two elven television networks in Norway alone--the UK had twelve of them--and three film production companies, and small local radio stations, which used the cheaper audio-only filter, had sprung up all over the world. Televisions were in fully forty-five percent of households now. Computers, which had always been useful, were in eighty percent of households--only a five percent jump, but people were getting them with a lot more processing power now, to handle video. Cell phones were in ninety percent, with most of the holdouts being among water-based Underjordiske, and a few of the older hulderfolk. 

Thus it was that nearly every magical citizen of Norway, in some way or another, had at least one device that was suddenly turned on or hijacked in a splash of blue light, and that now showed the face of Lirikael Vinael. 

Most of them knew him. Many of them liked him. He was polite and earnest and young and handsome, and he came from a family that had spent many years teaching him just how to conduct himself. 

In the inmates’ common room in the minimum security section of Innilokun Ríki, Linnael Aruviel leaned forward, love and pride and concern showing on his face. In Ekeberg in Oslo, Aruviel’s daughters Melantha and Jessalyn took out their phones, saw Vinael’s chalky complexion and wild eyes, and shared a moment of schadenfreude, because in the absence of news about some family tragedy, the only thing that could make a right-wing politician look like that was a sex scandal. In an apartment on Gamle Normannsgata in Oslo, Gisela Freidag had a moment of rage that she couldn’t even watch a film without the Bright Court intruding, which gave way to a sinking sensation. In Bergen, Chuck and Maddy left their phones at the kitchen table and came to stand behind Kai at his computer. He took their hands in his own, and all three shared a look of trepidation. In Trondheim, Ulf swore because he’d been Facetiming his eldest boy, and Vinael went down a few more notches in his estimation. And in the last standing hall in Asgard, three changelings and two Ylvisåkers stared at the monitor in horror. 

Although Vinael had neatened up a little, he looked like hell. "My fellow elves and Underjordiske, forgive my intrusion on your devices this night, but I have an urgent message. I am Lirikael Vinael, Junior Magister, and it is with a heavy heart that I deliver this news. Odin has fallen to the radical svartalfar, poisoned by their trickery. None can stand against their scourge. There is but one course of action left to us: we must unleash Fenrir, and cleanse the Earth of evil." His voice broke. "We have fought so hard, for so long. I wish it had ended some other way. But if we continue on our present course our doom is certain, and yet if we take decisive action now, we are assured that after the conflagration the Earth will rise again, green and peaceful, and mayhap we will rise again with it. Stand strong, my friends, and keep hope in your hearts." The broadcast cut out.

***

"Nonsense!" Odin thundered, slamming his flagon on the table so hard that mead slopped out and landed in Bård’s plate of roast beef. "From start to finish, nonsense!"

" _We_ know," Vegard said.

"Fenrir is the wolf, right?" Bård said, discreetly using his napkin to mop up the mead. 

"Fenrir is chained in the bowels of the Earth," Odin said, and although they’d read it all, Bård put out a hand and pressed Vegard’s arm, to stop him saying so. "At the end of time, his sons swallow the sun and moon, the earth shakes and trees are uprooted, and all bindings are loosed, including Gleipnir, the enchanted chain that binds him. I meet Fenrir on the field of battle, and he swallows me whole, even as Thor dies in battle with Fenrir’s brother Jormungand."

"At least it’s Fenrir here, and not Jormungand," Bård pointed out. "I somehow don’t think any of us would do well in a fight against the Midgard serpent."

"Nevertheless, in the hands of a proper loremaster, it would being quite a tale," Brynjar murmured.

"But the only reason you’re here to swallow is that the Bright Court _made_ you," Vegard pointed out. "Did they make a Fenrir for you too?"

"Fenrir were first," Brynjar said. He was slipping Geri and Freki mutton chops under the table. "One story says he hath existificated since the beginning of time, pure destructive force, a sliver of entropy carved off the whole, and the gods and elves, dark and light, sought to bind it, name it, tame it, shape it, fix it, at great cost to themselves. Another says he are a doomsday weapon, given the form of a great wolf, and judged too terrible to use. In any case, he are more than a wolf; he are destruction itself, with a mind and a will. That is why he is kept chainified, by dwarf-forged chains that will not loose until the end of time."

Odin did something to the computer, and Skype re-established the link. Vinael’s face appeared on the screen again, looking haggard. "Yes, Lord Odin?"

"I saw your broadcast. Will you force a god to plead with you, then? So be it. I beg you, Lirikael Vinael, please do not do this thing. Do not release Fenrir. Do not doom the worlds."

"Lord Odin," said Vinael, his voice infinitely gentle, "it is already done."

The connection cut again.

***

From deep in the bowels of the earth, there was a sound, barely a whisper at first, but it resounded, and grew with each resounding, until it shook the stones under their feet.

"Finn!" Brynjar cried, tackling Bård, and Finn dove over Vegard.

Then the floor exploded upward, and the paws and head of a massive wolf pushed up through the hole. Snapping and snarling, it forced its shoulders through, scattering flagstones, sending the great table onto its side with a crash. The wolf pulled its body through the floor, and then, with a scrabbling of hindquarters, it was in the hall. 

Odin leapt between the wolf and his guests. "Hold!" he thundered, drawing a sword and plunging it into the wolf's heart. 

Fenrir stood, panting, for a few seconds. Then he opened great jaws, and with a snap took off the top half of Odin’s body. The bloodied sword clattered to the stones. Odin’s lower half staggered back, but it wasn’t fast enough. Fenrir ate the rest of him, and paused for a moment next to the hole in the floor, pawing at its tongue as if to scrub off the taste of deity. 

Finn’s ribs and collarbone had been broken by flagstones, and his legs and pelvis had been crushed by the table, but he gritted his teeth against the pain and dragged Vegard’s limp body as far back through the wreckage of the hall as he could, and blockaded him from the wolf with a couple of heavy chairs. Brynjar and Bård seemed to be struggling along together, and Finn dragged himself back to help them. 

Fenrir snarled and wheeled, and, head low, he stalked towards them, drool running down his chops to patter on the flagstones. Finn froze as Bård and Brynjar scrambled back. The wolf’s canines were easily four inches long. He supposed that as last sights went, at least this one was unique. 

The wolf closed its mouth, and sniffed at him with a wet nose the size of a football. Then it made a small disappointed noise, wheeled around again, and burst through the wooden doors of the hall, unhinging one of them.

Finn allowed himself exactly three shuddering breaths before he dragged himself back to Brynjar and the brothers. "Vegard?"

"I’m okay," Vegard said, sitting up with Brynjar’s help. He winced as he rubbed a lump. "I’ve got a hard head. Jesus Christ, Finn! Stop moving!"

"Brynjar, you too," said Bård.

"Gives us two minutes," Brynjar said, using the arm that wasn’t hanging limp to array his legs in front of him. "We heal very fast."

"Bård, what about you?" Vegard asked. 

Bård was ashen. "Brynjar shielded me from the worst of it, but I think my shoulder’s broken. You?"

"I took a knock, but I’m all right." Vegard knelt and ran his fingers lightly over Bård’s upper arm and shoulder.

"Right there there there there there ow STOP!"

"Okay, okay," Vegard soothed. He started to lever himself to his feet. "I’ll get the car. Will you three be okay until I get back?"

"Vegard, hold. I think there are a better way," Brynjar said. Softly, into the flickering darkness of the hall, he called, "Sleipnir?"

There was the sound of hooves scuttling, and then the horse dropped from the ceiling by a thread, landing neatly and lightly on the floor. She knelt, and with Vegard’s help, Brynjar clambered up onto her back, clutching her mane. At Brynjar’s insistence, Vegard was next because he could cling with both arms. Then came Bård, with his arm in a sling made out of the shreds of the tapestry that had hung behind Odin. Finn brought up the rear. Most of his pelvis had knitted now, but he could still feel the bones grinding together in a couple of places. He thought of Bård, who would take weeks and weeks to knit at all, and felt physically better and mentally worse.

***

Sleipnir got to her feet with a lurch that made Finn and Bård moan, and even Brynjar sucked air through his teeth. Then the horse carefully skirted the hole in the floor, and then she was running through the wildflowers, with a gait that was a bit unsettling, but mercifully much smoother than that of a four-legged horse. The sun had not changed position since they’d come to Asgard, even though they’d been there for hours. It had been nice at first; now it seemed vaguely offensive.

They covered the distance from the hall to the car in seconds, and kept going. "The car," Vegard protested.

"Finn and I will take Sleipnir," Brynjar said. "She are fast enough to pursue Fenrir without keeping to the old roads." On the other side of a fringe of trees, Bifrost shimmered. "We will take you close to the city of Varggrav, but the way is not passable by car. There you can visiting a hospital and--"

"You’re going to ditch us and go after Fenrir yourselves?" Vegard demanded as Sleipnir launched herself onto the rainbow bridge. "Who died and put you in charge?" 

Brynjar turned on Sleipnir’s back, raising an eyebrow. "Does you need me to answer that? Does you _want_ me to answer that?" Into the shocked silence that followed, he said, "Someone must following Fenrir, and it cannot be you two. Finn and I heal fast." He illustrated this with a wave of the arm that had been hanging limp by his side in the hall. "It makes sense to give us the dangerous job, but it are not the whole job. Vinael hath somehow broken Gleipnir, the unbreakable chain that holded Fenrir. If we are to have a hope of containing him and halting Ragnarok, a craftsperson must be found. Finn and I has no standing, no reputation, no bargaining power. You has no standing, but humans has the indulgence of all elves, and you particularly has money, some fame, and the goodwill of past service to the svartalfar."

"It’s true," Bård admitted. "I don’t know how far that will take us with the lios alfar, though."

"My implants telleth me that will not be a problem in Varggrav," Brynjar said mildly. 

There was something other than rainbow ahead of them now. "Is that the end of the bridge already?" Bård asked. 

"No," Finn said softly, from behind him. "It’s Fenrir. We’re catching up."

Thinking of the right words helped Bård ignore the pain. "Okay, it’s logical, but it doesn’t feel fair to saddle you with the consequences of something you never chose. Again."

Brynjar shrugged. "Surely Finn and I can shoulder the burden of children the world over."

"Usually the burden isn’t a giant doomsday wolf," Vegard pointed out.

"Right now it are not about fair or not fair," Brynjar said. "This are what needs to be done, and we are the ones who can do it."

Now the end of the bridge was visible, a spot of darkness in the centre of the blazing light. It grew and grew. Bård said, "What I’m trying to say is, if something happens...if this is the last time we see you...you’ve been..."

"You’re heroes," Vegard said. "Real ones. We’ll make sure people know that." He withdrew an object from his pocket, and passed it to Finn. "You might need this more than I do." He smiled a little. "Use it only in times of great need."

"You’ve saved our lives a bunch of times now," Bård added. "We can’t thank you enough for that. And it’s been a pleasure and an honour to know you, and..."

The dark swallowed them, and Sleipnir landed lightly on the floor of a cave. This time, Bård was the only one who cried out. Sleipnir scuttled forward a bit further, until the echoes opened up around them, and then stopped.

Light flared. Finn had breathed a ball of light onto his open hand, and he set it carefully on the air above them. Sleipnir knelt. Finn helped Bård to dismount. As Vegard was scrambling off Sleipnir’s back, Brynjar turned to him and put a hand on his arm, fixing him with a stare. "This is not as close to Varggrav as I would prefer, but we dares not spend the time getting you closer. Follow the currents of magic. Wait not; dawdle not. Make all of the hastes." His mismatched eyes roved from brother to brother. "It have been a pleasure and an honour for me too."

"For us," Finn added, mounting the horse’s back again. 

Sleipnir rose, turned, and lipped each of the brothers’ hair in turn. Then she wheeled, and was gone.

Finn’s light showed them a tall, multi-storeyed chamber that looked like it had been shaped by tools. It was a hub of sorts: other tunnels, some large and some small, led off from it. The entrances to some were high, and had ladders dangling from them, or ramps and switchbacks. Vegard closed his eyes, wrinkled his nose a little, and pointed. Finn’s light, dwindling as its caster sped away, showed them three possible tunnels. Vegard guided Bård to the centre one before it the light winked out, leaving them in utter darkness.

Bård groaned, stretching out his good arm to feel his way along the tunnel. "Our headlamps are in our packs. In the car."

"I've got you," Vegard assured him. "Come on, we'll walk." With a little hum, he conjured his own small ball of light, and it rose up in front of them. "I can feel magic up ahead, lots of it, so Brynjar was onto something." He put an arm around Bård’s good shoulder, so that the bad arm was between them. Together, they walked into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Amon Tobin's "Rhino Jockey" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0VYz4acR5w
> 
> I'll add, since I'm here, that today is the second anniversary of four things that turned out to be kind of meaningful in my life: 
> 
> (1) Of course, "The Fox." It's not my favourite Ylvis song, but it proved to be a most effective gateway drug. But it would be a month before I would even hear of it. I was a little preoccupied because 
> 
> (2) I found out that for budgetary reasons, the job I'd had for seven years had changed its hiring policy in a way that meant I wasn't getting my contract renewed, precipitating a downward spiral that I never dreamed could happen to someone like me. I've only just now managed to get my life back. But that last six or seven months of utter hell--I credit Ylvis with being my life raft. Probably that wasn't healthy, but healthy is relative, and a good friend once taught me that you do whatever you need to to be okay. And I can't think of many other flawed coping strategies where the most common side effect is learning Norwegian. 
> 
> Also, because it was an absolutely stellar day,
> 
> (3) I broke my leg in a trampoline accident. 
> 
> And I remember the exact day this stuff happened because 
> 
> (4) It was my birthday. 
> 
> So yeah. Two years ago I had a really, REALLY bad day. And now it's better. Well. I still don't have an ACL, or savings, but I have my life back, and that's more than I thought I'd get this time even ten weeks ago. So, here's to today, the anniversary of two good things and two bad ones, and thanks for sharing it with me. :)


	15. Night of a Thousand Terrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breaking news / Infiltration / Rebellion / Pollution / Rejection / Counterintuitive survival strategies #6: crass consumerism / Stuff that wasn’t in the training / Invasion

Sleipnir emerged from the tunnels on a mountainside in Sarek. The horse paused for a long moment, while the changelings scanned the peaks around them by the light of a waxing moon. She launched herself forward again, running headlong down the slope at an angle that would have sent another horse tumbling. A moment later, Brynjar pointed to a grey shape bounding downhill. "There."

"This gives us a bit of a window," Finn breathed. "Even when he gets out of the park, Lapland is very sparsely populated. But what are we going to do? I don’t have training in offensive magic; do you?"

"I can see anything. And I can talks through anything with a speaker." Brynjar’s back stiffened. "Maria. I am going to miss my report."

Finn squeezed his shoulder. "You’re saving the world. She’ll understand."

***

_Excuse me for news, gentle hulderfolk. My name is Brynjar Kvam. Fenrir, released earlier tonight by Lirikael Vinael, approach your enclave. It were advisable to leave with immediateness, and go deeper into the mountain. If thou hast anything strong-smelling, such as perfume or cleaning fluid, spray it around to cover your scent. Thank you, and apologetification for the inconvenience. This is a warning, and this is Brynjar Kvam._

***

"Sorted," said Brynjar. "Easy."

"Do the humans know? About Fenrir?"

"Some of them," Brynjar said. "A handful. I’ll has to think of something for the rest."

They couldn’t fight, so catching up to Fenrir would avail them nothing. Instead, they hung back, and messaged ahead, getting people out of the way. Brynjar warned off two more hulderfolk enclaves, some dryads, a small party of ghouls, and--albeit a bit more snidely--a great house of the Bright Court. He had a moment of alarm, about four hours into the chase, when the grey eye saw Fenrir bolting something down, and Finn had to hang onto him to keep him from falling off Sleipnir’s back. It turned out to be a sheep. Three sheep, by the time they found the half-chewed ear tags. "I think he should be allowed sheep," Finn said. "He can’t have eaten in millennia."

"Sheep mean shepherds," Brynjar said grimly. "Yes...bother. Humans. A farming family. If I cry wolf, they will getting a gun, and be devoured."

"Can you warn them about something else humans would be afraid of, then?" Every muscle in Brynjar’s face suddenly went slack. "Brynjar?" Finn cried, alarmed.

Brynjar frowned. It was mercifully symmetrical. "Just thinkinging. Humans are as different from each other as elvenkind and Underjordiske-kind. They will fear no one thing. But I can sees what they do most fear."

***

_Excuse the interruption to your misleadingly edited reality show. This is Brynjar Kvam with breaking news. An army of rabid clowns hath broken loose from a circus in Lakshol and is advancing steadily south. Sources say that the clowns are sympathetic to Al Qaeda. Anyone in the area is advised to extinguish all fires and retreat to a locked room underground._

***

"Satisfaction?" Finn pressed after a few minutes.

"Satisfaction," Brynjar answered. "There was a little boy I were worried about, but fortunately he has a cruel big sister who have tormented him with a clown doll to get him into their fruit cellar."

He warned off more hulderfolk, the workers at a goblin orchard, and a colony of svartalfar artists. Long later, he let out a protracted whimper. "Talk to me," Finn said.

"Straumen. Eight hundred humans."

"Can you do eight hundred at once?"

"It will drain my energies terribly, but methinks so. The challenge is to find what eight hundred people will fear."

***

_Excuse me for breaking news. My name is Brynjar Kvam. The decay of western civilization at the hands of youth culture and foreign influences hath begun in the village of Straumen and is spreading southwest at an alarming rate. Residents are advised to take cover in locked basements for the remainder of the night._

***

"At which point western civilization will rise again?" Finn asked dryly.

"Shut up."

"Seriously, I feel dirty after that one."

"Me too," Brynjar sighed. "I am a little relieved that that one do not take fully, but I has another plan." He urged Sleipnir to a full gallop, and they surged past Fenrir and down the mountainside.

***

As soon as the emergency radio broadcast had concluded, Stine got texts from Signe, Åse, Erling, and Jorunn. They were all variations on the same message: Are you buying this?

She wasn’t, of course. It was too many kinds of ridiculous to count. She tried to tell her mother so, but her mother said that however odd it sounded, newscasters didn’t play around with this stuff, and it was better to be safe than sorry. Besides, there was something a little bit strange on the wind--didn’t she feel it?

"But Mom, it’s absurd! If they were really serious, someone would evacuate us. What if it’s just someone trying to get us below ground for their own shady reasons?"

"Then I don’t want my daughter above ground when they come here with their own shady reasons," her mother said, with finality.

But when they were trooping down to the basement, Stine said, "I have to get up to the upstairs bathroom."

"There’s one down here," her stepfather said. 

"No, but Dad, I left some"--she dropped her voice, and pretended to squirm uncomfortably--"girl things in there. If we’re gonna be here all night..."

"Hurry, then."

She grabbed her purse and her phone from her bedroom, and left by the back door, latching it quietly. No need to antagonize her family. But something fishy was going on, and she was going to find out what. 

She jog-trotted down the winding street. It wasn’t eleven yet, but most of the houses she passed were dark and silent. Haugakerveien ended in Fylkesveg 539, the main road through town. She found a car parked by the side of the road and hid behind it, waiting, as around her the lights went out.

There was movement far down the street, and a sound a little like hoofbeats and a little like the rattle of a woodpecker. Stine poked her head out as the phenomenon, inhumanly fast, swept through the street and came to rest right in front of her. 

The impossible horse snorted and stamped and blew. Vegard Ylvisåker, seated behind his brother, looked straight at her and said, "You shouldn’t be out here, sweetie. Didn’t you hear the radio?"

"I _knew_ there was nothing to be afraid of," she said, getting to her feet. "Is this for a sketch?"

"I wish it were," Vegard said. "I’m sorry we lied on the radio, but it really is dangerous to be above ground tonight."

Bård had had his face turned away from her all this time. Now he turned to meet her gaze. There was something funny about his eyes. "Go home, Stine. Please. You don’t want to meet what’s chasing us." He turned his head again, and looked back to the nearest mountain, where something incredibly large was bounding towards the village.

Ylvis walked her, on their weird spider-horse, back to her house. "Tell your friends," Vegard urged. "The reason might be fake, but the warning is deadly serious."

Locked in the basement, with her angry but relieved family, Stine texted her friends: "OMG I saw whats out there. Tell u tmrw. Ud nvr believe me. Srsly JUST STAY IN."

***

Sleipnir gallopped the streets, and Brynjar sought out the holdouts. For some of them, the sight of Sleipnir was enough to drive them underground. For others, it took a bit of gentle persuasion. Finn did most of the talking, since Brynjar found using his Bård-voice exhausting. In the end, they saved everyone. Everyone. And Sleipnir followed Fenrir west.

***

_Excuse me for breaking news. A recent study by the University of Wales at Lampeter hath shown that cholesterol is far worse for you than previously thought. So much worse, in fact, that it are prowling the streets of Bringsli tonight, devouring all it encounters. Residents of Bringsli and the surrounding area are advised to retire to their basements for the night, lock their doors, and eat lots of porridge. This have been the news, and my name is Brynjar Kvam._

***

"How’re you holding up?" Finn asked Brynjar, who sat slumped on Sleipnir’s back as they trotted through Lakselveien, Bringsli’s main street. They were both covered in pixie bites--there had been a little misunderstanding with the pixies--and a farmer just outside of town had taken a few shots at them. Finn had a bullet in his shoulder, and Brynjar one in his calf, and they could just stay there.

"Fine, fine."

Sleipnir brought her head around, and bit Brynjar’s ear.

"I think our trusty steed disagrees," Finn observed. 

"I are sure that nothing I feel right now feel as bad as being eaten by a giant wolf."

"Touché."

***

_Excuse me for breaking news. Giant spiders composed entirely of gluten and atheism are approaching the village of Hopen. Residents are advised to take shelter in locked basements, as they are wobbly on stairs--the spiders, not the residents--but they can feel free to emerge at dawn--the residents, not the spiders. This were a dire warning, and my name is Brynjar Kvam._

***

They had switched places on Sleipnir, so that Brynjar could close his eyes for a few minutes. Finn didn’t have an all-seeing eye, but he could sense magic as well as anyone, and he warned some merpeople, a trio of duppies, a small monastic community of incubi and succubi, and some oni. Finn was just buying time, though. Fenrir was heading steadily west--which was good for Løding and Oddan to the south, admittedly, but very very bad for Bodø, a city of sixty thousand, about fifty thousand of them human.

Behind Finn, Brynjar twitched in startlement. "Oh gods," Brynjar said faintly, slumping forward again. "I can’t keep...I can’t..."

***

_Excuse me for breaking news. A group of friends and family approacheth the home of Inger Ødegård, a fifty-seven-year-old school vice principal, with the intention of discussing everything she has ever done wrong. The discussion are expected to culminate in the revelation that they never loved her anyway and are tired of pretending. Asked if anything would dissuade him, her son Kjetil, whose lunches never contained enough fresh local fruit, said, 'We probably won’t look in the basement pantry. We don’t care_ that _much.' This have been an entreaty. My name is Brynjar Kvam._

***

Finn’s mouth hung open. "Brynjar, that was quite possibly the cruellest thing I can imagine."

There was a bit of a whine in Brynjar’s voice. "But I _likes_ Inger, Finn. I wants her to live, and there is nothing else she fears."

Finn turned around and stared at him for a long time. Brynjar’s complexion was chalky, and there were dark smudges under his eyes. "Cell phone," Finn said finally, a little more gently than he’d been inclined to before.

Brynjar sighed, pulled Bård’s old cell phone out of his pocket, and keyed in a number.

Finn took it back and pressed "send," and waited. "Hi, yes. Is this Kjetil Ødegård? I represent EldreSamtale, a new initiative by the Norwegian government. I’m just calling to remind you to call your mom first thing tomorrow, and let her know how much you love her and how very grateful you are, particularly for all those nutritious lunches she packed for you in school. ...Oh, no, sir, nothing to worry about. As far as I know, she’s just dandy, but wouldn’t she be dandier if she knew you were thinking fondly of her? No, not tonight--it’s after 01.00, you know! But first thing tomorrow. Absolutely, and thank you from EldreSamtale. You too."

***

_Excuse me for breaking news. This is Brynjar Kvam. Failure and Chlamydia are stalking the streets of Bodø tonight, while those left unclaimed will has to contend with the essential meaninglessness of existence and the inevitability of a lonely death._

***

As the lights of Mørkved, one of Bodø’s suburbs, spread out before and below them, Brynjar sagged against Finn’s back. "Oh dear gods, Finn," he whispered, "he are headed for the university."

Swallowing hard, Finn reached into his pocket and withdrew the object that Vegard had given him. It was time. He unfolded the wallet reverently, and pulled out Vegard’s credit card.

***

_Pardon, this just in: in response to tonight’s impending tragedy, Tonight With Ylvis is sponsoring free beer at the Wembley Pub and Lounge. There will also be cheese and, and things with chickpeas in them. You just heard about free beer. This is Brynjar Kvam._

***

_Excuse me for breaking news. My name is Brynjar Kvam. Attention, residents of Mørkved, Hunstadmoen...Jensvoll, Alstad, and Bodø proper. You are about to be overrun by...pardon... vast stampedifications of unruly Universitetet i Nordland students in search of free beer. If you can, take shelter in a locked basement. If you cannot, you are...advisified to seek refuge in the Wembley Pub and Lounge. This...are all the news. My name...is...pardon..._

***

Finn felt a sudden shifting weight between his shoulder blades, and turned just in time to keep Brynjar from sliding off Sleipnir’s back. Sleipnir halted, and let Finn dismount and switch places, so that he could hold Brynjar securely in front of him. The fairer man’s mismatched eyes opened, roved around glassily, and then slid closed again.

"I don’t know what to do," Finn whispered. He was starting to see glimpses of the water of Saltfjorden, and that meant the road. That meant houses, and people. He couldn’t ride through a city of fifty thousand humans, talking people around if they didn’t want to get out of the way. Brynjar was their best weapon, but he’d used himself up. Getting him to a safe place where he could recharge might be their best chance to protect as many people as possible. But by the time Brynjar was good to go again...

Silly. He pulled out Bård’s old phone, and drew the glyph to summon the dálki. "Fenrir is heading straight for Bodø," he told them. "We--my friend and I have been trying to keep him from hurting anyone, but he just hit a wall. My friend, I mean. I’m going to do what I can, but...we need help."

"Understood. Where are you now?"

"Coming out of the forest to...a...a bunch of red and white apartment buildings. Okay, I see a sign. Støverveien. Now we’re on 80. He’s not far behind us." There were houses all around now. If Fenrir turned his attention to any one of them, there would be carnage.

"And this is Fenrir, Fenrisúlfr, the one that Lirikael Vinael was talking about?"

"The same."

"I don’t know what we’ll be able to do, but we’ll give it a shot."

Finn guided Sleipnir to the paved cycle lane beside the highway, and watched the gadflies assemble, trying not to panic at the sight of them. They weren’t here for him; they were here for the wolf, he reminded himself. 

He watched from afar as Fenrir skidded to a halt in front of the gadflies. Watched them open fire with something that hurled blue light with the sound of a guitar string snapping. Heard Fenrir’s earsplitting yelp, and his snarl of rage. Heard shouts and a single shriek. And then saw Fenrir break the line of dálki and come barrelling straight towards him. Straight towards Highway 80. Straight towards Bodø. 

"Sleipnir," Finn murmured, "is there a way you can secure Brynjar and prepare for a full gallop?"

The horse reared up on six legs, and used the front two to play out a line of silk. Finn looped it, wove it, and secured it where she indicated until they had tied Brynjar to her back. They finished just as Fenrir came into view again, with the remaining dálki in hot pursuit, firing the occasional shot. Finn waved. "Hey wolfie! Hey wolfie! Come get me!" Sleipnir wheeled, and gallopped towards the city. 

The buildings mercifully turned industrial, and then thinned out altogether, giving way to a stretch of farmhouses set so far back from the road that they couldn’t really compete with active goading. But then on the left side, rooftops started to happen again, not close to the road but alarmingly clustered. A greenhouse--no good at all. A train station--too small. A Jula and a small shopping centre, either of which might have done, but he was past them before it could register. There was a rock cut on his right and houses on his left, but these were screened off by a sound barrier. 

The rock cut gave way to stores and houses. "Wolfie!" Finn called, turning on Sleipnir’s back and waving. "Come on, boy!" Fenrir followed, tongue lolling. Dared he hope that the wolf was getting tired? More rock cuts, more sound barriers, more rows of identical houses that he could only hope Fenrir would ignore. 

The phone rang, and Finn answered. It was a dálki officer. "Where are you trying to lead it?"

"I’m looking for a big building. A shopping centre. Nothing will hold it, but I think I can slow it down."

"Understood. You’ve got a major one coming up on your left. We’ll direct you. You want to turn... _here_." 

They passed the sign welcoming them to Bodø proper. Another sign threatened that this road would lead to to the city centre. "Turn, turn," he begged Sleipnir, and she hopped the gravel median and turned left. Fenrir let out a bark, and halted, panting, sides heaving. "Come on," Finn called, waving his arms at the wolf.

There was a streak of blue, and the sound of a guitar string breaking. Fenrir yelped, and let out a long, bloodcurdling howl as the gadflies caught up and surrounded him, using their weapons to herd the wolf south. 

A wide, low building loomed: a sign said this was City Nord, and the parking lot was empty. Perfect. Finn thanked the officers and rang off, and urged Sleipnir towards the shopping centre. "Please get me as close to those big doors as you can," he said. "Then I’m going to get down, and then...you should rest and get water and food. And please take care of him."

"Finn?" Brynjar said, his voice thin and foggy.

"You rest, Brynjar. I’ve got this."

Sleipnir made for the doors, paused just long enough to let Finn slide off her back, and kept going. Fenrir was entering the parking lot now. Finn jumped up and down, waving his arms. "Hey Fenrir! Hey wolfie! Over here!" He waited long enough to make sure that Fenrir was following him rather than the horse, and then he ran. 

He found the great glass doors, and stopped just short of crashing into them. He was so flustered that he almost forgot how to undo locks. The electronic lock responded to his coaxing, the latch opening with a _clunk_. He looked back, and froze. 

Fenrir was within a few feet of him, head lowered, hackles raised, growling. This close, Finn could smell burned fur. 

"Finn," Bård’s old cellphone said in Brynjar’s voice, uncharacteristically rapid and quivery, "you, you, you are a shallow, gutless, narcissistic, slothful, brutish punchline of a man, and you will dying alone knowing that no one have ever truly loved you!"

Claws gouged the glass where Finn’s head would have been, were it not suddenly hanging in shame. Then the automatic doors slid open, and Finn mustered the energy to run into the darkened mall, with the wolf in hot pursuit.

***

So far, it was working. Fenrir had struggled a little to get through the doors, enough to give Finn a decent head start. He’d run for one of the anchor stores, an upscale home decor store called Iøynefallende. The chief attraction was that in addition to the glass front, it had a steel cage. A steel cage wasn’t going to hold Fenrir, of course, any more than a glass one would, but Finn was hoping to keep him busy for a little while. Finn Weber had only one superpower of his own, and it was time that he used it.

The locks on Iøynefallende were just standard mechanical locks. He magicked them open, and got the cage lifted, just as Fenrir squeezed through the glass front doors. 

The lights were on low in the store, as they were in the rest of the mall, but everything was still quite visible. Finn ducked behind one of the checkout counters and waited. And waited. And waited. Then he got tired of waiting, and poked his head up. There was a giant paw, just inside the threshold of the store. He ducked down again, and waited until he heard the click of claws on the floor, and panting like a freight train. A shelf fell over, sending coloured glass bowls crashing into splinters. Finn clamped a hand over his mouth to stifle a startled scream.

He looked out again. Fenrir was turned away from him, nosing at the bowls. Finn picked up a stapler from the little shelf under the counter, and threw it as far as he could. It landed among some exquisitely designed clothes hampers. The wolf’s head came up, and he padded further into the store to investigate the sound. 

Finn darted to the front of the store, lowered and locked the cage, and closed the glass doors, thinking wryly that in one way or another he’d spent the entirety of his short life keeping the wolf from the door. He tried not to make a lot of noise, but by the time he got the glass doors locked, there was a wolf standing uncomfortably close to him. Just standing. Watching. Not killing. Standing.

"Ha-ha...just making sure nothing gets in." Finn walked slowly sideways, until he was behind a bedroom display. He suddenly felt ridiculous. How was this going to help? Still, he could do one thing, and it was better to do it and go down fighting. "Now look at this, this fine oak bookcase. Solid wood, that. You won’t find finer. And get a load of this workmanship! Tongue-in-groove joints! I’d say they don’t make ‘em like that anymore, but obviously they do, and this can be yours for only...yikes! Moving on! Gorgeous brass bedstead. Have you ever seen such a bedstead? And it’s brass! Check out these sheets. They’re made of cotton." He ran a hand along them. They did feel like they would be really, really comfortable, and for a second the need for sleep was like a physical ache. "These’ve gotta be, oh, I dunno, like a fifteen _thousand_ thread count. Right?"

Fenrir put one massive paw on the bed. He seemed to be eyeing Finn dubiously. 

"Well, maybe just one thousand. Or something." He glanced at the price. "They’re charging like it’s fifteen thousand. We have stumbled into some swanky home accoutrements, my friend."

Fenrir swiped at the pillows piled on the bed, his claws shredding them to pieces. 

"Oh, now," Finn said reproachfully. "I bet those were orthopaedic." 

He lured Fenrir into the towels, praised their colours and absorbency and awesome fluffiness. He made a towel nest, and fled it as Fenrir pounced, scattering colour everywhere. He offered the wolf a selection of shower curtains on which to sharpen his claws, and skated across the floor on upside-down bathmats. He made bouquets of fake flowers appear from his sleeves. He’d probably destroyed hundreds of thousands of kroner in merchandise--but, he reminded himself forcefully, it was just stuff. Stuff, as opposed to people. As opposed to the entire planet, somehow. Not too clear on that. But the wolf was here with him, and not ravaging Bodø, and that was the important thing. And honestly? If he ignored the fact that any moment Fenrir could cease to be amused, and kill him before he knew what was happening, he was kind of having fun.

***

The call came in at three in the morning. The manager of the Iøynefallende in City Nord was still awake, listening to the radio in perplexity.

The display showed that the call was coming from the store. The security guard. His voice shook.

"What is it, Pål? What’s going on?"

"Um...yeah...I know how this is gonna sound, but Josh Groban is in here, trying to sell the entire contents of the showroom to a giant wolf."

"Pål," the boss said, "are you on any medication?"

"Not yet," Pål said. "Definitely thinking about it."

"Look, you know what? I...don’t disbelieve you. Don’t intervene. Just...get out. Get to the basement if you can and wait until dawn. There’s been some really weird stuff on the radio tonight."

***

As they walked through the tunnel, Vegard told Bård about magic, about wave forms and focus and how it couldn't be picked up on measuring equipment because one of its essential properties was that it required and was limited to sentient minds, except that there were apparently workarounds, the first of which had been discovered in 1908. He talked about ambient magic and the energy it required to gather it into a form that could be used, and about recessive genes and the temporal lobe, and Bård tried to pay attention and ask questions, but he was in too much pain. When Vegard faltered and fell silent, Bård felt guilty but grateful.

Then Vegard stumbled against him, right into the bad arm, and Bård yelped in spite of himself. Vegard, though, didn't say anything. 

"Vegard?" Bård said shakily. 

His brother only grunted at him. In the dimness, the look on his face was pure hostility. 

"I'm sorry," Bård said. "I just hurt a lot right now, and I'm not...my patience is really thin." He laughed a little. "Looks like that goes for both of us, right?"

"Wha'ver." The light Vegard had kindled for them was very, very dim now. It must have been waning all the time, too gradually for Bård to notice. 

"Vegard, what's gotten into you?" 

There was no answer again. Bård realized that under the circumstances, it was entirely possible that his question might have a very literal answer. They'd already faced one ancient evil that had been released from the depths. Had Vegard been possessed by another? He cast around in the back of his mind for his brother's presence. And yes, Vegard was there, but...it was more like a closed building with the lights on low. 

Vegard went down all at once. The light didn't follow him, but Bård could hear him retching. Bård turned so that he could use his good hand to hold Vegard's hair out of his face. When the noises stopped, he let Vegard stay where he was for a few seconds, and then used the good arm to haul him up.

"Vegard?"

"Uh?"

"Are you okay?"

"Nuh-uh."

"What's wrong?"

"No' feelin' well."

"Is there...is there something inside you?"

Vegard looked pointedly at the puddle on the tunnel floor. "No' 'ny more."

"We have to keep walking," Bård said, pulling him into a careful little shuffle. "We have to get out of here. And I'm sorry if you don't like this, and you can be very angry at me later if you want, but I've got to try something."

"Wha’ver."

As they made slow progress, Bård did his best to relax and block out the pain and focus. He would normally never do this, but if a situation had ever called for it, it was this one. He found their link again, and followed it all the way back, over the threshold that separated them, right into Vegard's mind. 

Beside him, Vegard whimpered, and in the feeble light distress showed on his face. Bård reached up with his good arm, and patted the hand that was on his shoulder. Vegard's fingers plucked gently but clumsily at his own for a few moments before subsiding. 

From his own side of the link, Bård had always gotten the impression that Vegard's mind would be a busy, noisy, efficient place, with seas of input being filed away--kind of like a trading floor where the brokers had been replaced with enthusiastic geeks exchanging facts. But through Vegard's senses everything was fuzzy and distorted, and he had a monstrous headache, probably from that bump on the head. There was no one else but the two of them in here, though; that was something. 

They did need to get out of these tunnels and find help. Tentatively, feeling like a traitor and a fool in equal parts, Bård sought out Vegard's magic. 

He had trouble finding it at first. He was looking for something new, something spectacular or mystical that he could tap into. But when he finally stumbled on it, it was no different from Vegard's musical ability or piloting skills. Of course; it was just another system, and Vegard had always had a gift for figuring out systems. 

Now that he knew what he was looking for, he found the currents and eddies of magic that Vegard had been following. They were a lot busier up ahead, and a change in air currents told his own perfectly ordinary senses that they were coming up to a junction. 

They stepped into a massive, echoing space that somehow still felt hot and close. The dim little ball of light hovered over their heads, illuminating virtually nothing, but Bård had the uncomfortable suspicion that they weren’t alone, that the noises in the huge chamber were from more than the movement of air and the echoes of their own passage. 

A few seconds later something brushed his good arm, and he jerked back, stifling a gasp. The thing jerked back too, and on the edges of the little pool of light something melted into the shadows. 

Vegard stumbled into him again on his bad side, and Bård had to clap his good hand over his mouth to keep from screaming. All of a sudden, it seemed perfectly conceivable to him that the tunnel was full of things that moved and whispered in the darkness. He pulled Vegard to a halt against the wall, breathing hard. Then he forced himself to go still inside, and reached into Vegard’s mind again, and softly sang the ball of light back to life. 

The tunnel was a seething mass of hunched bodies, all walking in the same direction. A hundred or more pairs of eyes reflected his light back at him. 

Vegard mewled and covered his eyes, but not before Bård saw that something was very wrong. With his good arm, he yanked Vegard’s arm away from his face, ignoring his brother’s yelp of protest. One of Vegard’s pupils had narrowed in response to the light. The other one hadn’t. 

Bård turned to the mass of creatures. "I need help," he called shakily. "My brother and I are hurt, I think badly."

One of them shouted, and Bård saw fangs. And then they were running for him...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U8C_XuE7wc  
> (I didn't link to the official video because that tells its own story, and besides deserving to be watched on its own there are sound effects.)
> 
> Also, the is-it-possession-or-is-it-a-head-injury bit in this chapter was written months before I read the is-it-possession-or-is-it-a-head-injury bit in YSTW3. But they're pretty different, I think.


	16. Everything Must Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Midgard / Vegard / Unorthodox Survival Strategies #7: Facepainting / The merits of satiety / The Fellowship of Clearly Not Thinking Things Through / And Finn feels fine / Need-to-know / The Bård Ylvisåker Guarantee

Sunlight streamed through the skylight at Iøynefallende, City Nord, Bodø. Now was the time to sleep, but Fenrir was unused to so much light--or so much room to stretch. It took him a moment to remember where he was. Free. In Midgard. Gloriously free in glorious Midgard. 

Lazily, he opened one yellow eye, and searched for the funny little man who had showed him a safe place to hide from the shooty people, and had then amused him until he got tired and put his head down on his paws and fell asleep. Now that Fenrir’s nose was accustomed to the leather-and-chemical smells of the store, the man was easy to track by his scent, which was not a meat smell, but something stranger and sharper and less tasty. The man was under the bed he had so coveted--under, and not on it. Fenrir hooked a claw into the waistband of Finn’s pants and drew him out. He tried to lift him onto the comfortable bed, but his claws weren’t good for that sort of thing, and made a lot of holes in the man instead. Stupid people-things, all fragile and screamy. And now he was ruining that nice bed by leaking all over it. Fenrir sniffed a claw. He was getting hungry again, and it is possible that blood would have driven him into a killing frenzy, but this...was not blood. He gave the man a couple of contrite pats, then withdrew the paw and went back to sleep.

***

This was the current working theory: that something had caved his head in, and some helpful soul had stuffed it with cotton batting to help it keep its shape.

Vegard’s memory felt like a clearance table--full of slightly imperfect monstrosities that he pawed through listlessly but didn’t really want--and none of it gave him any clue as to where he was. This place was dark, verging on unpleasantly warm, and smelled like a school. He was in boxer briefs, lying on something soft. 

He recognized the sound of Bård’s breathing, coming from above him, and the odd creak over his head. And something else. He opened his eyes.

Something was in the room with them. Vegard stared, and saw glowing eyes and fangs.

In harsh accents and a dialect he had never heard before, a voice said, "Oh good, you’re awake."

The figure turned the lights up. Vegard saw that he was on a lower bunk bed, in a small white room. He tried to sit up, but sank back down as the room shifted sickeningly. His companion was a small brown middle-aged woman in a gauzy pale green jacket. She placed a second pillow behind his head to prop him up. Then out of one of many pockets, she took a light and shone it into his eyes. Recoiling made the room start rocking like a mid-sized boat.

"Pupils are back to normal, thank goodness," she said cheerfully. "How do you feel?" 

"Dizzy. Head hurts." 

"To be expected," she told him, and pulled a test tube out of another pocket. It was about two thirds full of blood. "We had to suck this out of your skull." She handed it to him. 

He looked, and swished it around a little. It was cold, as if it had been refrigerated. It made him dizzy to think about it. He handed it back.

She looked at him, wide-eyed. "Are you sure?"

Her incredulity made him smile. "If you can use it, by all means."

She inclined her head. "Thank you. You honour me." She took off the rubber stopper, and swigged it down.

Vegard fainted.

***

When he opened his eyes again, he felt much better. He felt wiped out, but the pain was gone, and the room was staying put, and he worried a little about how long that meant he’d been unconscious. The doctor, if that was what she was, sat on a small stool by his head. "Welcome back," she said cheerfully. His blood was still fresh on her lips. "So...I gathered from the look on your face that that was a surprise."

"A little," he said, locating his contacts on the side table and inserting them. Her ears were pointed, of course. "It's okay, though. I think I've had my blood drunk before somewhere. Also in a healthcare setting." There was something sticky on his forehead, and he reached up to touch it. 

She grabbed his hand. "Oh, don't smudge that..." Vegard saw that his fingers had come away wet and red, and she clucked her tongue, moistened a cotton swab in a little basin of water, and dabbed at his forehead, blotting with a tissue. "Bother. I can't get this line back, and I think I swallowed the last of it."

"You've still got some here," Vegard said, tapping the corner of his mouth with the hand that wasn't bloody.

"Ah, thank you." She swiped the blood off her own lips with her little finger, put her finger in her mouth, and then applied it to his forehead. "What's funny?"

"I have _so_ many questions right now."

She grinned at him. "It's the twentieth of March, you're in a hospital in the city of Varggrav, my name is Doctor Torden, and you and your brother are going to be just fine."

"Thank you. And I guess..." He waved a hand in the direction of his forehead. "...this is a spell?"

"I thought you knew, until I saw your face," she said. "And yes. Very powerful magic. From your own tongue, your blood could have sped up your recovery from potentially a couple of years to oh, I would have given you about three days or so. But the act of giving it freely, and the trust that that entails, and not to put too fine a point on it but my own expertise... You're probably already good to go. I thought, What a beautiful thing for a human to do. Not your fault of course, but I'm a little disappointed that you simply didn't know."

"Knowing, I wouldn't do anything different," Vegard said. "But aren't you afraid of diseases?"

She let out a wheeze of laughter, and with a guilty look at the bunk above him, clapped a hand to her mouth. "Oh, you dear boy. Blood magic is extremely illegal, and if you listen to certain people, evil through and through. If the dálki found out I’d used it, diseases would be the very least of my problems."

"Oh. Oh. Then why would you offer it to me?"

"Because the blood was right there, and you needed it, and it's a ridiculous law."

"Well...thank you. And you said Bård is all right too?"

"Even better than before."

His brother’s sleepy voice came from the top bunk. "Yeah. _Yeah_. You mush’ve given me d' good drugsh." 

"Blood is thicker than morphine," Dr. Torden said cheerfully. 

"Somethin' in my mouf..." There were awkward spitting noises from above. Dr. Torden looked up, one eyebrow raised, and passed up the box of tissues. Then Bård’s tousled head appeared over the side of the bunk. He grinned broadly, incredulously. There was drying blood on his forehead, and fresh blood in his smile. "Okay, I just tried to move my arm until it hurt, and it doesn’t hurt. And my front teeth grew back. My _real_ front teeth!"

"Both to be expected. Your brother very kindly consented to let me fast-track you both. At least, I thought that's what he meant. You could even take your cast off, now."

"Awesome." Bård disappeared for a moment, and there were velcro noises from above before he reappeared. " _You_ look a lot better," Bård said.

Vegard wracked his memory. "The last thing I remember is...that can’t be right. Did we meet Odin? Like, real, honest-to-goodness Odin?"

Bård’s face clouded. "Yeah. Honest-to-goodness Odin. That’s the last thing you remember?"

"Yeah."

Dr. Torden said, "You can fill him in a bit later, maybe." Vegard saw the stern little shake of her head, and made a mental note to ask about that later. "Right now, we should probably get some food into both of you. I'll arrange for something from the kitchen." She bustled out. 

The bed above Vegard's head creaked, and Bård swung down on a rope. Bunk beds in a hospital seemed unwise, but these appeared to have a sling and pulley system for getting patients into bed. There were also neat ladders at the foot, but this was Bård after all. "Good as new," he pronounced, flexing his shoulders. "Better, really; I think they fixed my neck, too."

"Did they?"

Bård plunked himself down next to him, all of a sudden. "You scared me. They said we could have lost you," he said, pulling him into a hug. Vegard wasn't feeling very huggy at the moment, but something in Bård's tone of voice told him that his brother needed this right now, so he bore it uncomplainingly. "Your eyes were all funny... One of the miners, his shoulders were as wide as he was tall, he took one look at you in the witchlight and he just picked you up in his arms and _ran_. All the way here, I guess. By the time I got here, they were--" Bård passed a hand over his mouth. "--they were drilling."

Vegard shuddered, and pulled out of the hug. "Jesus Christ, Bård. Did I really need to know that part?" He looked into his brother's brimming eyes, smoothed down the dark blond hair with one firm, flat hand, and used the other to capture Bård's shaking hands. "Look, look--no no no, ssh-ssh-ssh--I'm okay now. I'm okay. We're both okay. Okay?" He reached over and snagged his brother a tissue.

While Bård was blowing his nose and dabbing at his eyes, Vegard pulled out Chuck's phone and took a quick selfie, to capture the glyph. He saw that the little wounds that Huginn had inflicted were completely gone, as was the scratch that the svartalfr girl had given him in Korgfjelltunnelen. Then he frowned, and took another picture, this time of the top of his head. "There," he said with a forced little laugh, looking at the screen. "I can see where they shaved it to suck the blood out."

"Just the tiniest little patch," Bård said, and reached up to lay a finger on it. It wasn't even tender. The skin in the photo--a piece the size of a ten-Eurocent coin--looked perfectly whole, and even had a thin layer of stubble. Bård flashed him a weak smile. "Not nice, when people decide your hair needs cutting, is it?"

"It was good of them to do such a small area," Vegard said. "I do like my hair, but given the choice between that and my brain, I’d rather preserve my brain." He sat back and leaned against the wall, eyes closed, for a moment. "Were you in here?"

"What?"

"It feels like you were in my head."

"Oh...yeah. I didn’t know how badly you’d hit it. When you went all funny, I thought you might be possessed."

Vegard laughed. Then: "Did you borrow anything?"

"Eh...a little."

Vegard opened his eyes, and looked at Bård, eyebrows raised. "Hmmmm?"

"Your magic. I needed to find the way. And I needed light."

"Excellent," said Vegard. 

"Really?"

"Well, some of it is practice, and some of it is strength, and some of it is precision, but the really hard part is, like, making the leap in your mind. But if you used it, that part’s done, isn’t it? And you can do it again in your own head."

Someone came in at that moment, with lunch trays for both of them. They ate sitting side by side, and for hospital food, it was passable.

***

Finn awoke on top of the bed, but he could have sworn he’d gone to sleep under it. The holes in his clothes, and the stains on the bed, told him what must have happened. So that hadn’t been a nightmare after all.

He sat up. The tattered remnants of the sheets stuck to him where he’d bled. He peeled them off his skin and clothing, and got to his feet. 

Fenrir was still asleep, Finn saw on the way to the employee toilets, but the wolf had resettled himself among the futons. On his way back, though, Fenrir sprang to his feet, stretched out his front paws, and opened his jaws very, very wide. 

Finn eyed the wolf speculatively. Maybe if he could get hold of Brynjar... Brynjar! He still had the cellphone, from when he’d called the dálki, and now he started dialling. Then he realized what exactly was wrong with that, and shook his head at himself.

The phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hello, silly Finn, who forgetting that Brynjar Kvam needs no phone of his own."

"Jesus, Brynjar. Are you okay?"

"Weary but intact. What can I does for you?"

"You can order me a whole cow, to be delivered through the skylight at Iøynefallende. Maybe a couple. And, I dunno, maybe some takeout? And something to drink. I’ll give you the credit card number."

"I knows the credit card number, but thinks this will not be on the Ylvisåkers’ dime. To drink, something with a bit of a kick, perchance? You sounds like you could use it."

"Sure, thanks. And then you can take a nap, because you sound like you’ve had a few nips yourself."

Brynjar chuckled. "It shall be done."

"What’s funny?"

"The dálki has commandeered my services--"

"The speaker thing?"

"I wishing. Wait, no. The validation would be nice, but even this little bit are painful right now, so no. I fetch and carries. Right now I are making coffee. I thinks to myself, I should resting, but what? Everyone are tired. There are great disquiet in the city. These little things I can do to help is suddenly beneath me? But Finn have told me to rest now, and that makes it okay."

"Yesterday you stared down a bloody god, and today you need me to tell you your fatigue is legit?"

There was a smile in Brynjar’s voice. "The wolf have been good for you, Finn."

"No. Having a full belly’s been good for me. Being able to pay for stuff I need has been good for me. Not having to sleep under a bridge has been good for me. And you know what’ll be good for you?"

"A nap," Brynjar sighed. "My thank yous, Finn."

***

They assembled in the junior magister’s office in the Samkoma, the ragtag brotherhood of misfit lios alfar who had sworn an oath to vanquish evil and loose the svartalfar’s hold on their world. Kalindrael, Abatrael, Aurindael, Thiradiel, and Vinael. They were all pale and haggard, their silk suits rumpled, their intricately worked leather shoes scuffed, their silver ornaments unpolished. None of them had slept. Aurindael and Kalindrael were drunk.

"It was badly done, Lirikael," Abatrael said for the eighth time. The Peace Division had been out in Oslo in full force all night. Three elves were dead after rock-throwing lios alfar had stormed a svartalfar-owned nightclub by the docks. Seven had been trampled to death when someone in a packed temple claimed to have seen a giant wolf outside the upper windows. A young ifrit was in a coma after an attack on the tram. A young svartalfr had died falling from a rooftop: he had claimed to be Fenrir’s son Hati Hróðvitnisson, out to devour the moon, even as his brother Skülle would devour the sun. That tox report was expected to be interesting, but Vinael’s protestations that his hand had been forced and all of this was necessary to eliminate the svartalfar threat didn’t sound particularly plausible to Abatrael. He had just had to break the news to the family, whose grief had been as keen as any lios alfar family’s. 

"It is done," said Vinael, who had at some point given up trying to defend his decision logically. "For the good of the light, it is done. It hurt more than anything I have ever done before, but I have done it."

"Whether this is as we would have had it or not," Thiradiel said, "the wheels have been set in motion. It remains to get those we would save into Hoddmímis holt."

The questions became, then, who they would save, and whether it would be just lios alfar or some Underjordiske and humans and animals too, and how to strike a balance between saving their loved ones and preserving the skill sets that would be necessary for life in the new Midgard that would emerge from the fires of destruction, and how to convince the three lios alfar families already living in Hodmímmis holt that they should jettison their less useful members in favour of scores of complete strangers. It rapidly became clear, even to Vinael, that amid all their talk of heroism and sacrifice, it would have been a good to work these things out ahead of time.

***

Just before noon, the dálki worked loose two panes of skylight. While Finn distracted Fenrir by tossing pillows around in a corner, the dálki used a crane and a sling to lower two cows, a keg of mead, and bag of Indian takeout into the store. The keg arrived last, with the takeout on top. A dálki officer called down into the store, "Are you doing all right in there?"

"Dandy," Finn called back, and paused in his pillow-throwing. "Looks like you expect me to get even dandier, though. A whole keg?"

"Donated by the brewers’ guild."

"My thanks to them."

"Our thanks to you, Finn Weber. Are you sure you’re all right? You’re covered in..."

Finn walked over to the skylight, to the woman silhouetted against a blue sky. In a burst of wild defiance, he stood in a shaft of sunlight so that she could see his tattered, sap-stained clothes. "I heal fast."

"Oh," she said, drawing back. "Oh. Ah. We’ve got people coming up from Oslo. An expert. From the government. She should be here this afternoon."

A bellow told him that Fenrir had found one of the cows. "Gotta go!" he said in a rush. "Thanks again!"

By that time, though, the deed was done, and cow number one was just a few drops of blood on the hardwood, which Fenrir lapped at fastidiously. The great wolf licked his chops, then, and turned his gaze to Finn.

"There’s, a, um, ‘nother cow here if you want it," Finn said. 

Fenrir grunted, yawned, and lay down with his muzzle on his paws.

Finn found a kitchen display with a nice high counter, and put the stool on the other side, so that he was barricaded. Sort of. Once again, nothing could stop Fenrir if he really wanted to get at Finn. But he was getting the idea, by now, that Fenrir just wasn’t going to do all the terrible things that he _could_ do. He could have veered off to either side last night and killed thousands, but he hadn’t. He could have chased down and slaughtered the dálki who had hurt him, but he hadn’t. He could have burst out the front of the store, but he hadn’t. Yet. 

The food was very good. The bill of sale told him that it was shrimp vindaloo, palak paneer, baingan bharta, and pappadums. Two bites into the palak paneer, which was creamy and delicious, he realized what he was eating, and spat it onto the counter in front of him. He startled as a nose rose over the edge of the counter and took two great sniffs. Then a huge tongue came up and licked the palak paneer off before sinking out of sight again. Heart hammering in his chest, Finn peered over the edge of the counter, and saw Fenrir lying low to the ground, ears flattened, looking up at him with beseeching yellow eyes. With a giddy little laugh, Finn said, "I’m not giving you the shrimp. But you can have this. All of it." He emptied the plastic fruit out of a bowl, tipped the palak paneer into it, and set it down on the floor outside of the kitchen display. Fenrir ate it in one gulp. 

While he was out there, Finn tapped the keg and poured himself a vase of mead. After a moment’s thought, he reclaimed the palak paneer bowl, now licked clean, and filled it with mead. 

"I don’t have water to give you," he said. "At least, not right now. I think I can get some from the toilets, but it will take a lot of trips."

Fenrir lapped up the mead in front of him, while Finn pulled furniture around the bed he’d gone to sleep under and awakened on. "And I’ll just make a nice little nest for myself here. Where you could probably bust into it if you really wanted to, but I’m hoping you’re full enough not to go to the trouble. I’ve got a comfy bed, and got some fancy sheets, and a nice pillow here, I’ve got a cut glass lamp, some...oh. Fake books. See? They’re just boxes." He lay down on the bed, arms folded behind his head, with the vase of mead next to his head, and stared into the enormous yellow eye on the other side of the shelves. "You know what I wish I’d had a chance to do? I wish I’d read a book. I _can_ read. But, like, a _book_. 

"It’s funny. I’m on, like, the bleeding edge of Ragnarok, and this is the happiest I’ve ever been. Which I guess makes me a horrible person, but we knew that already, didn’t we, wolfie? Probably that’s the appeal of an apocalypse," Finn mused. "The world turns upside down, and we get to do all these things we shouldn’t do when we’re playing nicely together. And suddenly everyone has a shot to become something different. Probably it’s not a better way to do things, but if your life sucked to begin with, I can see the appeal.

"Do you ever wonder, though?" he asked Fenrir. "Like, what if things _could_ be different? If you didn’t have to be what they made you into? What would that look like?" 

"Roo," said Fenrir. "Rurrrrrr."

"And then you’re like, Well, what’s stopping me from being that person? So you try, you know, and maybe it works. Maybe they even treat you like that person for little stretches of time. But then something happens, and you realize it’s all..." He took another swig of mead. "Nothing changes. I mean, _you_ change, you do your level best to do the right thing, but how does it even matter when the world is one way, and it depends on you being one way, and it’s gonna treat you that way whether it fits you or not?" He laughed mirthlessly. "Look at me, talking to a giant wolf. I’m not gonna get sympathy from you, am I, wolfie-boy? I’m gonna get eaten. Gods, maybe it’s a good thing. The world can’t end fast enough for me."

***

After their lunch of savoury porridge with mushrooms and ground walnuts, Vegard took a nap, and Dr. Torden drew Bård into a quiet little room to talk. "His energy levels will be really low for the next couple of days," she cautioned.

"Well, yeah, I get that. He just had brain surgery."

She waved a hand as if that were nothing at all. "Cranial surgery, technically, to relieve pressure on the brain. But he's fine, totally fine. You’re both in top condition now, but he’s going to feel a little tiredness as a side effect of the treatment. Don’t worry about that. But...try not to tell him anything that’s going to upset him, too, because he does need to rest."

"You mean the end of the world thing." Bård had been keeping that on a back burner in his mind. Now, speaking it made it uncomfortably real. 

"Just so. Do you need me to put you in touch with anyone?"

"Yeah," Bård said. "I’d appreciate that."

***

Gisela Freidag sounded exhausted. "Boys, what did you do?"

It hadn’t occurred to Bård until just now that if you looked at things a certain way, they were responsible for what had happened. If they hadn’t gone to see Odin, who knew how long things could have kept up? "Our wives sent the changelings away to help us. We thought they died in the studio explosion. We thought we wouldn’t be able to go home again until _something_ changed. And when...when the guy who gave us our lenses--thanks, by the way--showed us the messages from Odin, we thought we could at least find out what was going on. We thought we could bring the truth back to you, and it might make enough of a difference that the Bright Court would leave us alone. And...well...I guess you know the rest."

"Pretend I don't," Gisela said wearily. "In fact, don't pretend. I have no idea." When Bård was finished telling her, she said, "Vinael. That darn kid. I suppose I should have known." If nothing else had come of the conversation, Bård would have treasured it just to have heard Vinael called "that darn kid." But the next thing she said made his blood freeze. "Your old friend Linnael Aruviel got his hooks into him years ago. Convinced him that he was some kind of Chosen One, destined to rescue the poor oppressed lios alfar from the chains of legal equality to their inferiors. He’s got a lot of Bright Court elves backing him, to varying degrees. A few people knew about his heroic quest to rid the world of us entirely, but I never dreamed that he’d take it this far. How did he set Fenrir free? Do you know?"

"Something called Gleipnir. Brynjar told us to come here to find someone who could fix Gleipnir."

There was a heavy sigh at the other end of the line. "There were always rumours that Gleipnir had a, what would you call it, an Easter egg built into it so that Fenrir could be released if it became expedient to do so. I dismissed them as paranoia, largely because the svartalfar built Gleipnir. Among other things I thought, if we had the means to release him, why wouldn’t we have already? In the Victory of the Light in 1892, for example, when three hundred thousand of us were slaughtered, including my grandparents and four of my aunts and uncles. Or the dawn of the Jewelled Era, in 763. I’d worry that we’d be blamed for this, if I hadn’t seen Vinael’s broadcast myself."

"What’s it like out there? Do people know?"

Gisela snorted. "People know, all right. The dálki say they’ve got the wolf under control in Bodø, but in Oslo alone seventeen people have died in...panics, I guess you’d call them. I haven’t had the chance to pay attention to anything elsewhere."

"Do you know anything, like...how long do we have? What’s our timeline?"

"Boys, I don’t know," Gisela sighed. "I don’t even know if the wolf is what you have to worry about."

"I watched him eat a god. I’m pretty sure we have to worry about him."

"Whatever he’s supposed to do, we just might do to ourselves, first. Or--no offence--humans might do to us. If your authorities find out that there’s a giant unkillable wolf out there, what do you think they’ll do?"

"I honestly don’t know," Bård admitted. "They might want him protected."

Gisela’s voice went up an octave. " _Really?_ "

"We don’t have a lot of wolves left in the wild here. Maybe thirty. Hunting wolves can actually get you jail time here."

"This is good to know," Gisela said. "This is something I can take back to the Samkoma. The assumption was that humans would use nuclear devices against it."

"Nukes? For a wolf? Seriously?"

"That’s always the threat," she told him. "About everything. The humans will find out, and the humans will nuke us."

"How does that even make sense? You just told me Fenrir’s unkillable. So, we use nukes, okay, and then there’s nothing left _but_ Fenrir."

"We don’t always give your powers of logic enough credit."

"I guess not," Bård said. "I’m unbelievably sorry for our part in this, but you do have the Bård Ylvisåker No-Nuke Guarantee. And is there anything that a couple of stupid humans can do?"

She sighed. "Fixing Gleipnir is a big one. Varggrav has some of the best craftspeople in the world. If I let the Samkoma know that something is in the works, it might take down the anxiety levels among some of the leveller heads. You are authorized to speak on my behalf in this matter, and you have my magisterial budget at your disposal. Probably others by the time today is over, but I can guarantee mine for the moment."

"Thanks," Bård said. "It’s...an honour to be trusted with this."

"It’s an honour I’m sure we could all have done without, but you’re there and you’re mine, and I don’t have to waste time briefing you or persuading you." There was a silence.

"Gisela?"

"I just looked at the call display. Are you all right?"

"We were hurt when Fenrir escaped, but we’re good to go. They--"

"Don’t!" she barked. She lowered her voice. "If you were hurt enough to wind up in a hospital, and you’re good to go now, I need to not know how. I took an oath to the Samkoma to uphold the law."

"What? Well...okay," Bård said. "Anyway, they’re releasing us tomorrow, but I don’t think they could stop me leaving right now..."

"No, you listen to your doctors, and you stay put," Gisela said. "This gives me time to make arrangements and do some research. And...there’s someone I think you should be in touch with, who is a little bit difficult to get hold of."

"Thank you, Gisela. You’re a lifesaver."

"No," she said archly. " _You_ are. At least, you’d better be."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: The Dissociatives' "We're Much Preferred Customers" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmwp_mNgoPY


	17. Big Bad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strange infestation / Not by the stubble of my chinny-chin-chin / Knotwork / The pen and the sword / Finn the traitor / Dis orientation / Dodging bullets

It was a Sunday, and City Nord was closed anyway, but the shopping centre manager did want a word with the crew of official-looking people who were outside of Iøynefallende with a crane. 

"We’ve got, a, uh, little problem in the store," the woman in charge said. "Their own management has been made aware." To the manager, she appeared to be wearing a yellow hard hat and safety jacket, and had a clipboard. This was a preferred dálki glamour when among humans, as it indicated authority while still making plausible a certain level of ignorance of the whys and wherefores. It was no use trying to come up with reasons a human would accept for surrounding a culvert with mirrors, or searching under flowerpots for an escaped felon. 

"I gathered that the crane wasn’t recreational," the manager said dryly. "Would you care to expand upon the nature of the ‘little problem’?"

"It’s a pest problem," the woman with the clipboard replied in a low voice.

"Oh, god. What kind of pests? I should warn the other stores..."

"Take a look," said the woman with the clipboard, cheerfully. She motioned to the outside doors of Iøynefallende, which had been blocked off by the crew with the crane, but which they now let the manager through to. 

She peered into the shambles that had been the showroom, and shrilled, "What have you got in there--wolves?"

"Just the one," said the woman with the clipboard. "He’s a big ‘un, though."

The manager looked harder. "That’s not a wolf. That’s a cow. There’s a cow in the showroom. And...is that that guy, from that show? Not the blond one, the other one. Why is that guy in the showroom, with a cow? Is this some kind of sketch?"

The woman with the clipboard began to think that maybe a sketch would have been a better cover story. But at that moment, Fenrir, who had been curled up behind the fake wall of a living room display, got hungry for seconds, and then there was no longer a cow in the showroom.

The manager turned away from the doors, eyes wide. "That...is a very large wolf."

"Surely you understand the need to handle this situation with delicacy and sensitivity. There’s only a handful of wolves left in the wild."

"And what, they all banded together to form _that_ wolf? Jesus."

"We have a, um, wolf expert coming up from Oslo this afternoon, to capture it and relocate it safely. The store might require a bit of cleanup--"

"A bit!"

"--but the rest of the shopping centre should be good to open on Monday morning." 

"Thank goodness for that."

The manager walked away, not thrilled, but satisfied. And as she left the immediate vicinity of the crane, she zoned out a little. When she zoned back in, she had forgotten the exact nature of the problem at Iøynefallende, but she knew that someone was on it, and that the shopping centre would be good to reopen on Monday.

***

Finn had never been drunk before, but his implants carried information about drunkenness, so he thought it best to ease off the mead before he was tempted to do anything unwise. He had one drink, and then switched to water from the sink in the employee toilets.

Fenrir, it appeared, had no such compunction. The wolf finished the mead, and when Finn tried to refill the dish with water, snapped at the air next to his head until he got the message and refilled it from the keg, instead. "I take no responsibility for how you’re going to feel in the morning," Finn said. 

"Urf," Fenrir said, and went back to lapping up mead. 

By 18.00, the keg was empty. Finn rather hoped that Fenrir would go to sleep, but instead, the wolf reeled around the store, marking the carpets, the ottomans (ottomen?), the obscenely huge decorative vases, and register number four as territory. Between that, the cow, and a splintery fleecy hill of scat amidst the lawn furniture and patio accents, the place was getting quite ripe. He wasn’t looking forward to cleaning all that up. He also wished that he’d turned on the lights before he needed them; he didn’t fancy creeping around the darkened store now that the sun was down. 

And then there was a cool, fresh breeze from above, and Finn saw that the panes were out of the skylight again, and felt his heart lift. Fenrir wasn’t going to be fit to run away anywhere for awhile. "I could get out of here," Finn said softly. 

There was a snarl, and a giant paw slammed him up against the fake living room wall. He cringed, eyes squeezed shut, and felt hot breath, scented with mead and blood, tickle his cheek. _I'm going to die with frizzy hair_ , he thought. 

And then there was a soft sound very close by, and an ear-splitting yelp. He opened his eyes and straightened just in time to see Fenrir retreat to a corner, tail between his legs. 

Finn dropped to his knees, gasping. 

A lithe dark shape peeled out of the shadows. Light glinted on a blade, which was then sheathed with a soft _snick_. And then arms were around him, and gentle hands were stroking his hair. Finn Weber had never been touched that way before, and it felt wonderful. In dulcet tones a voice said, "Oh, Vegard, are you hurt?"

Disappointment made him sag more heavily into her arms, but he rested there for only a split second before murmuring, "I'm not Vegard. And I'm not hurt." 

The swordswoman froze, then, and with a sigh Finn extricated himself and sat against a walnut wine cabinet with brass fittings. He cast an uneasy glance at it before settling back down. "His changeling," she said. "How did you get here?"

"Brynjar drove up to Asgard, and then he took Sleipnir and we rode back here. I'm called Finn, these days. And he's Brynjar. Right. I said that."

She smiled. She was wearing a black knit cap that hid her hair, and loose black clothing. Her voice was like music. "I'm Melantha. It's a pleasure to meet you. But...aren't you supposed to be guarding Vegard's family?"

"Helene and Maria sent us off to look after the husbands. And, well, giant wolf running around. Somebody had to do something. Bård and Vegard went to find a craftsperson who could reforge Gleipnir, and Brynjar and I are keeping Fenrir busy. So far the only people he’s killed are Odin and maybe a dálki officer. We’ve been really lucky." He made a witchlight, and started to weave through the store, around displaced furniture and toppled displays. "Hang on, I’m just going to turn the lights on."

She walked with him. "We _heard_ that someone was in here, holding the wolf at bay. My sister specializes in magical containment construction, and I’ve been working as an intern but I have a doctorate in Elven Studies with a specialization in Eddic History, and we set out from Oslo the minute the news came through. And then this morning the Samkoma called us and told us that they wanted to send us out here, and we were already in Trone. They would have paid for a flight, but...well..." She laughed a little. "I’m babbling, aren’t I?"

"No, no," Finn said. 

"I’m sorry. We drove all night. I’m a little...punchy."

Finn flipped a switch. Light flooded the wreckage of the store, showing him Fenrir snoring and drooling in the corner. Every so often the great wolf would whimper and twist, and his tongue would come out to lick the flank Melantha had wounded. "I...know I just turned the lights on, but if you want to get some rest, there’s a bed. I’ll change the mattress for you; the one that’s there is all clawed and bled on. And I’ll put some nice sheets on."

"Are you sure that’s safe? I won’t heal like you do."

"I’ll keep watch," Finn promised, "but I don’t think he’s going to be doing much for the next little while. Or...there’s a break room, if you want to use that. Privacy. I think there’s even a door to the outside." 

She considered. "I’d rather be out here." She smiled at him, eyes alight. "I don’t want to miss anything."

Finn didn’t get the joke, but he found himself thrilled at the prospect of being of some service to her. Together they pulled the old mattress off the bed, and put on a new one. He put on the nicest sheets he could find, and found her pillows to replace the ones that Fenrir had shredded. Despite the bright lights, not long after Melantha retired to the barricaded bedroom set, Finn could hear light snores coming from that quarter as well. 

Along with Melantha, the dálki had dropped a change of clothes, and some food. These he stored in the break room, but it didn’t make sense to use any of it just yet. 

First, he cleaned up the cow patties and the scat. The latter he had to put in a shopping cart to take it to the employee toilets, where he carved it up and flushed it in pieces, with his stomach doing lazy somersaults all the while. Then he took a mop and a bucket and cleaned up the places where Fenrir had sprayed. Then he had a good wash, using up almost the whole employee soap dispenser and absolutely soaking the floor, and _then_ he changed into the grey track pants and light blue t-shirt the dálki had given him.

For an hour he sat in an exquisitely carved oak chair, alone with his thoughts. He began to find himself wishing for company.

His phone vibrated, even though he hadn’t set it to vibrate. He answered it. It was Brynjar, much improved, and in soft voices, they talked.

***

_Excuse for news, Maria and Helene, with profuse sorries for the missing of yesterday. This is Brynjar Kvam, reporting. Home news: Oslo are abuzz with reports of the escaping of Fenrir the Wolf from his fetters in Asgard. By "abuzz" of course I means rioting. This newscaster is unsure of what a human will see should she choosing to venture to the out-of-doors, but perhaps a lack of venturing is the wiser coursification of actioning._

_Shopping centre news: A giant drunken wolf sleeps among the high-end electronics. A changeling shuffles through his neuroses like playing cards, lays them out, and plays them like solitaire. One elf sleeping on a new mattress. Another takes a break from hammering. A second changeling, still tender from overuse last night (a circumstance which are not as pleasant as it sounds), hopes that the dálki do not recognize, or recognize and do not enforce._

_Hospital news: Bård and Vegard have a perfectly clean bill of health, and will leave tomorrow to run errands and save the world. This have been the news, and my name have been Brynjar Kvam._

***

At midnight, Jessalyn called Melantha. Her sister sounded sleepy when she answered, and Jessalyn hoped that meant that she had managed to catch a nap. "Our ETC is 02.00," she reported. "Can you be ready to move by 03.00?"

"Think so. We probably should have secured him when he was passed out, but I was so tired. Like, probably-about-to-make-silly-mistakes tired. But you’ll never guess who our fearless wolf-wrangler is."

Jessalyn eyed Brynjar, who was nimbly working a silver cord into intricate loops according to a diagram, for the third layer of spells. "Actually I would. I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Bård is helping me with the cage."

There was a grin in Melantha’s voice. "Oh, now, that must be a treat for you."

"Um," she said, and tried to explain it in ways that Brynjar wouldn’t register. "Theona must’ve scrambled something. Uncanny valley stuff. Going to take some getting used to. How are you finding yours?"

"His name is Finn, and I know, I know, but I’m really going to enjoy working with him. He's...nice. Oh, he’s coming over. Yes, of course, come in. Yes? He says...he wants to know if they can please send in another keg of mead. The wolf likes it, and having him drunk is better than having him hung over."

"I’ll see," Jessalyn said. "At midnight on a Sunday, no guarantees."

She rang off, and checked Brynjar’s work. Impeccable. When she praised it, he smiled faintly and nodded, and moved on to the next knot. He was very pretty to look at, and he had been nothing but polite and pleasant, and he took direction well, but there was something about him that rubbed her the wrong way. The eye? The voice? The seriously weird diction? Not precisely that. But he hadn’t acknowledged it in any way. She made a little face at herself. Did she expect him to apologize for the way he was? To feel bad for not being Bård?

She hammered together another joint, bound it with salt-impregnated silk, and moved on to the next one. The silk would need a glyph painted on it in black ink, but after seeing Brynjar’s work, she knew she could trust him with it.

***

After sharing the Chinese food that the dálki had dropped, Finn and Melantha had worked together to anchor the trap spell, and to fill a bathtub with water for Fenrir when he woke up. Now Melantha sat among the stand mixers, reading a book and every so often pausing to underline something. Approaching her, Finn stopped short, aghast. "You can do that to books?"

"I have to," she said with a little smile. "I have trouble understanding how anyone can get by without it."

"I-I, I couldn’t," Finn stammered. "If I had a book. I haven't yet. Here. I thought you might feel like dessert. It’s not much, but..."

"Finn! Where did you get these?"

"They have a little section down by the cash. Biscuits too. I figure given the amount of damage we’ve done...and they’ll probably throw everything out anyway..."

She laughed as she peeled back the cellophane wrapper on the box he’d handed her. "Not the chocolates, silly. The cherries! They aren’t even in stores."

"Oh. Uh." He shrugged, feeling a blush creeping up his cheeks. "I have my sources."

"Well, Mr. Mysterious, I adore cherries, so thank you."

"My pleasure. And maybe you’ll think this is silly, but if you would save the stones... Plant them maybe? For, um, luck."

"I will," she promised, eyes dancing, and he thought she might be making fun of him.

"Um. Should I let you get back to your reading, or...?"

She snorted. "If you would kindly divert me from it, I would be grateful. This author is the most infuriating, unreconstructed, tiresome creature I have ever encountered. Well, aside from my father, and even _he_ is beginning to see reason, finally."

"Then why are you reading it?" Finn asked, mystified.

"There’s a conference in Romania in the summer. I’ve been accepted to present a critique of her work."

"The pen _and_ the sword," Finn breathed. "Awesome."

She laughed, musically. "Well yes, there’s not a lot of money in swordplay these days, and anyway, the pen is a little kinder to living things. Although I don’t know how I’m going to manage that here, mind you."

"What are you going to say?" he asked. "In this critique?"

"Are you asking to be polite, or asking because you really want to know? Because I have the thirty-second version, and I have the thirty-minute version. That somehow has to be down to twenty minutes in two months."

"Don’t give me the thirty-second version," Finn begged. "I’m sure any of the previous thirty-one would hold my attention."

She laughed again, with real delight, and started to tell him.

***

At two, Jessalyn phoned in, pronouncing the cage finished. Fenrir had by now started to make unhappy doggy noises, and he was lapping at the water in the bathtub. They'd had to get uncomfortably close to him to make sure it would be there when he woke up. Finn had insisted on getting the closest. "He's more used to me, and I heal fast," he'd explained. Sure enough, as he neared, pulling his end of the tub--which, although stoppered, still managed to leave a trail of water on the hardwood--one bleary yellow eye had opened, focused on the changeling, and then closed again.

"We have to get Fenrir into the trap," Melantha told Finn now, when she'd hung up. "Then we have to get him into the cage before he can break free."

"And how long until he breaks free from the cage?" Finn pressed, a twin furrow between his brows. 

"It should take him about three days to work through all the wards," she said, "but the great thing is, Jess can keep layering wards on top."

Finn had been sitting at her feet, and now he stood. "I'm not looking forward to this," he said with a nervous laugh.

Melantha had steeled herself to run, to fight, to act as bait if necessary. She stood, balancing on the balls of her feet, and drew the sword Fégjarn, urgently borrowed from the friend who had it on loan from the university. She had contemplated the Stone of Sælu, but it proved to have been borrowed by someone else that very day, and anyway, a sword probably made more sense. 

Finn walked over to the giant wolf, and said, softly, "Fenrir? Wolfie? I know you don't feel very well right now, but we have to move you."

The wolf opened one eye and growled. 

"Come on, boy. We can't stay here. The nice obscenely rich people need their store back."

"Rur," Fenrir said, and snapped the air next to Finn's head. Finn cried out and ducked, and Melantha started forward, brandishing Fégjarn, but the wolf settled back down. 

Finn stood there for a moment, looking lost. Melantha moved forward with the sword again, but the alarm that registered on his face checked her. Then he said, "We'll take you to a place where it's nice and dark."

Fenrir took a couple of tries to get up, lapped once more at the water, and then walked, stiff-legged, towards Finn, who walked backwards, beckoning all the while. 

With a flare of blue light, the trap triggered, and Fenrir yelped. From within a net of spellwork, his hairy sides started heaving, and he vomited a foul-smelling pile of bones onto a row of leather hassocks. As Melantha ran to lift the steel gates at the front of the store and open the glass doors, Fenrir let out a long, mournful howl. Finn was right at her side, helping, but he looked ready to howl along.

***

Vegard and Bård were released from the hospital in the morning, to quarters on the fourteenth level. Gisela had arranged everything for them.

The lobby of the hospital was small and cramped and dark, with two levels of tunnels, the second level apparently accessible by the same rope-and-pulley system that appeared on the bunk beds. As they walked through, Dr. Torden appeared from one of the other corridors. She looked to be in a rush, but she lit up when she saw them, and paused. "Take care of yourselves," she said with real warmth. "Best of luck." Then she was rushing off to wherever she had to be.

That seemed like the ideal sendoff, so they walked through the front doors--these were tapestries showing a variety of hospital scenes--and out into the city of Varggrav.

And stood there, gaping.

At first Bård--for whom the trip there had been a nightmare haze of pain and fear--thought that they must be absurdly far north, for it to be so dark this time of the morning, and then he realized the truth: they were still underground, in a vast round pit, about halfway down. "It’s like Dante’s _Inferno_ ," he murmured. 

"Not really," Vegard said, pointing. "I’m pretty sure the _Inferno_ didn’t have a post office and a sweet shop. Or a hospital, for that matter." He put a hand on the chest-high railing, which appeared to have been carved of jade. "Or railings."

Around the sides of the pit were the shops and neighbourhoods of Varggrav, with ambient lighting provided by witchlights, LED lights, and strategically placed mirrors. At the very bottom--looking down brought on a rush of vertigo, and he was grateful for the steadying hand that Vegard placed on his shoulder--appeared to be a mining operation. He could imagine how it worked: as the svartalfar mined deeper into the Earth, the miners would occupy the houses closest to their work, and then when the pit got deeper, they would move, the neighbourhood would gentrify, and the process would begin all over again. 

"This place is huge," Bård said. "How are we going to find...anything?"

"Let’s find where we’re staying first," Vegard said, sensibly. 

Polite questioning yielded news of two kinds of public transit: the elevator and the spiral tram. The elevator was more walking, but they decided on that, to see more. The svartalfar around them seemed quite unfazed by the presence of two humans in their midst, or perhaps they merely prided themselves on being forward-thinking and cosmopolitan. It was kind of nice, Bård reflected as he stood in the creaking and shaking elevator chest-to-shoulder with a dozen svartalfar, to be tall. Now he knew how Magnus must feel. Well, not Magnus, but perhaps Calle. 

The fourteenth level, when they arrived, seemed to be one of those left behind by the miners, but too new yet to have been gentrified. It was a little shabby, but there was a lot of public art here. The rough rock walls were decorated with exuberant murals, and the fixtures for the lamps and mirrors were wound with yarn. Once Vegard let out an astonished cry of delight and pointed to the tunnel ceiling. Someone had managed to write, in huge letters, in moss, "I WILL BE OKAY...AND SO WILL YOU."

Their address proved to be a sort of boarding house. Gisela had chosen well: to get in, they had to walk past a couple of women jamming with lutelike instruments, and four or five young people having an earnest conversation about an interpretive dance based on the theories of Roger Penrose. 

The landlord was a blind svartalfr with two little grey dogs of indeterminate breed, that stuck close by his sides wherever he went. Bård wondered that they didn’t trip him up. He bent to greet one, and it growled at him. "All arranged," the landlord said, as he showed them to a tiny room with a desk and two twin beds. "No hard drugs, no loud music after midnight, no dark magics in the common areas, if you make a mess clean it up, and if you bring guests, be considerate. Breakfast is from five to ten, lunch is served at noon sharp, tea at four, dinner at eight, and you’re free to use the kitchen anytime. Just don’t use anyone else’s food--but there is a cupboard of food that people have gone off and left, and that's all free. The dogs say you’re humans. This is an open-minded establishment, so just be respectful and you shouldn’t have any trouble. If you do, come and see us."

The brothers thanked him, and settled into their room. It was shabby and cramped, the walls were a sickly pink, and every angle was just a smidgen off ninety degrees, but it was clean. Vegard took his shoes off and stretched out on one of the beds. "I think I’m going to take a little snooze," he said, the last word ending in a yawn.

Bård had been about to sit him down and tell him everything, to brush him up on their world-saving mission, but recalling Dr. Torden's words, he decided to let his brother sleep. "All right," he said. "I’m going to go exploring."

***

The cage containing Fenrir had been glamoured and mounted on a flatbed trailer, and a dálki car escort glammed up to look like one yellow escort car and four regular police cars accompanied it. They had to travel very slowly, with flashing lights, because the load was oversized, but by dawn they were well outside of Bodø city limits, and soon they would have to stop for the night.

Brynjar sat in the cab of the truck, next to the driver. Melantha and Jessalyn sat in the back seat. There was room for Finn, but he insisted on riding on the back of the trailer, with Fenrir, and the dálki had reluctantly permitted it, as long as he wore a harness. Melantha had been out there with him, with her own harness, until a cold rain had started. 

"I could drives," Brynjar offered, for the seventh or eighth time since they'd started out. 

"No thank you," said Riddari Amphitrya Sorael, a little shortly, for the seventh or eighth time. She checked the rearview mirror, and saw that the other changeling was still huddled by the front of the cage, shivering, curls dripping. He looked thoroughly miserable. 

There was no doubt in her mind by now that these were changelings of the men wanted by the Peace Division for the studio explosion in Ullern, and a week and a half ago that might have warranted impounding them, or at least asking them a few questions. But that all-points bulletin had gone away mysteriously, sometime between the appearance of Sealed statements from the Ylvisåkers and the revelation--quickly hushed up, but Sorael’s brother-in-law had got it from the lab in Oslo--that the keyed glyph used in the explosion was only a very slight modification of a proprietary glyph used by the Dýranblað Academy, which taught magical warfare to the most fortunate (read: richest) sons and daughters of the Bright Court. There was word that the Padjelanta dálki still had a bone to pick with the brothers, but right now there were more pressing matters to attend to. Besides, these guys weren’t the Ylvisåkers--the experts from Oslo knew the brothers themselves and had confirmed as much--and as weird and troublesome as they were, with the one constantly wanting things for the wolf and the other wanting to drive, they were helping. 

Her phone buzzed. Who would be calling at seven in the morning? She cast a quick privacy screen before switching to hands-free. "Sorael."

"They told me at the miðstöð that you were the person to call," said a male voice with a London accent. "You are transporting Fenrisúlfr, are you not?"

"I’m in charge of containing Fenrir at the moment, yes. May I ask who’s calling?"

"The name’s Hróðvitnisson. I’m a barrister. I specialize in animal welfare cases."

" _Animal welfare?_ For Fenrisúlfr? You do realize that he’s one of the harbingers of Ragnarok, right?"

"Well, that depends, doesn’t it? Might I inquire as to his living conditions?"

"Depends on...? Never mind," Sorael said. "We’re transporting him right now, but the cage is a nice big one."

"A cage. Oh my. How cute. And how is that working?"

"Well enough for the moment. There’s a, uh, guy out back with him now. He’s got him under tarps to keep the rain off."

"Food and water?"

"He just ate a whole cow, and he’s getting another one this evening when he wakes up. And his...handler back there is making sure he’s got water and..." She broke off, thinking not all of this might sit well with an animal welfare person.

"And?" Hróðvitnisson’s voice was like honey and silk. 

"Mead," she said reluctantly.

"Excellent! He does love mead."

"Look, do you want me to hand the phone over to--"

"No, no, talking to his little friend won’t be necessary. I’m well satisfied, Riddari Sorael. I have become rather...well, let’s just say that my brother and I have no interest in making trouble unnecessarily."

"Your brother?" Sorael echoed. 

"My partner at the firm. And before you ask, yes we do get tired of each other sometimes, but we are consummate professionals. Now, do keep up the good work, with our thanks." The line went dead.

Sorael was about to cancel the privacy field, and remark to Brynjar Kvam of all people that that had been a very weird conversation, but then the phone buzzed again. "Sorael," she said again. 

"Ljón Guriel Abatrael, of the Peace Division. I'll get right to the point. As you may or may not know, Officer, we’re still looking for the Ylvisåkers, and someone at your miðstöð said you might have a line on them."

She bristled. She’d always thought of Guriel Abatrael as a bit of a bully, and in his four years at the head of the newly created Peace Division there had been nothing to challenge that, and plenty to bolster it. "What? How so?"

"The dark one has bonded with the wolf."

"I don’t quite follow what you’re saying, Ljón. The Underjordiske man who helped us capture the wolf is not one of the Ylvisåkers.”

"Are you certain, Riddari Sorael? Our records say that Vegard Ylvisåker's credit card was used in Bodø two nights ago."

"I'm certain, Ljón. I don't know where the Ylvisåkers are, but our guy isn't even human."

"Hmm. What is he?"

She had no idea what made her lie, but she didn’t feel an ounce of guilt about it. "I think he’s a djinn. I didn’t ask. He’s doing us a pretty big favour."

"A big favour indeed," Abatrael echoed sourly, and rang off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Mother Mother's "The Stand" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50LShhlkTfw


	18. Bonds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old man / A spree / Not my department / Per / Irrigation / Six impossible things before dinner / 34

Vegard awoke in the middle of the afternoon, feeling much refreshed. Given the date, he should really go out and buy something, but Bård was still out and he didn't want his brother to come back to an empty room, so he amused himself by watching the footage that Ulf had given them. It was interesting, and it jogged his memory a very little bit, but the questions they’d been hoping to answer with it didn’t matter anymore. 

After a few hours, there was a knock on his door. The hostelier was there, with his two little grey dogs. "Visitor for you," he said.

Vegard thanked the man, and headed down to the shabby common room, which was stocked with mismatched but comfortable furniture in various states of wear. He didn’t recognize anyone there, but now an impossibly broad-shouldered svartalfr in a frayed grey shirt and dirty, stained jeans was rising to greet him, a silly smile growing on his seamed face. "Well, bless! You look worlds better than the last time I saw you, young fella."

"I’m sorry," Vegard said, offering a hand, "my memory is terrible right now." He stood at least a head taller than the stranger. 

The man took Vegard’s hand in both of his own large, rough, scarred ones, and gave it the gentlest of squeezes. Then he took Vegard by the shoulders, and gave him a hug that managed to be both delicate and very manly. "You wouldn’t remember me. I carried you to the hospital."

"Oh," Vegard said. "Oh my. Please...sit. I can’t thank you enough for that."

The man settled back onto the couch, and Vegard sat next to him. "No thanks necessary, young fella. My younger sister--" He closed his eyes momentarily, as if in pain. "--had an accident in the tunnels ten years back. We...weren’t fast enough to save her. When I saw your eyes, I knew what I had to do."

"I’m so sorry," Vegard said, eyes wide. "About your sister, I mean."

"Thank you." The man looked down, voice cracking. "Six little kids. Me and Gro took ‘em in. Do you have kids, young fella?"

"Three," Vegard said. 

The stranger’s eyes widened. "Right. Human. And young still. You take good care of those kids. Cherish them."

Vegard’s eyes had misted over. "Oh, I do."

"Good, good. No matter how bad things get, you don't let 'em go to the mines, now."

"Never," Vegard vowed. "Do you have kids of your own?"

"Eleven. Nine still alive." Those four words described a tragedy that would have felled Vegard, twice over, but his rescuer saw his stricken face and said in a kind, sad voice, "Don't look like that, young fella. We're blessed by Frey to have so many make it through. My sister and I were the only ones out of fifteen. Now it's just me. And bless, my nine made it to adulthood, and they're having little ones of their own now." He pulled a grimy handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his eyes. "It was all getting better. And then those bloody fools... I couldn't care less if I could vote, and anyway Grandmum died in the North Stoving when I was twelve. I didn't want to vote; I wanted to _live_."

Vegard was entirely bewildered by this, but he patted the man's shoulder awkwardly. 

"Oh, don't mind me, young fella. I get soppy sometimes. And maybe they'll come up with something, hey?"

"We can always hope," Vegard said, although he had no idea what he was talking about. 

"Of course we can," the man agreed, with a heartiness that sounded forced. He got to his feet, and Vegard rose with him. "Well. I just wanted to see how you were getting on, and the hospital told me you were out and here. Looks like they did right by you, for sure. A little--?" He dabbed at his forehead twice. "Don't answer that, there's a good boy. I'm glad they did. It's a fool law anyhow. Your brother too? No, don't answer that. Is your brother doing well?"

"Very well," Vegard said, when it was clear that he could answer that.

"Good. It's a fool law." The man shook Vegard's hand. He was, as before, extremely gentle. 

"Thank you for saving my life," Vegard said. 

The man waved the thought away with a great work-stained hand. "We got to take care of each other, hey?"

"We do," Vegard agreed softly.

When the man was gone--it would have been good to know his name, but the entire conversation had put Vegard off balance and he wasn't sure when introductions would have been okay--he turned to a young nissen with a punk haircut, who was reading something and sticking a lot of post-it notes into it, and said, "Excuse me...do you know when the North Stoving was?"

"Ninety-five," she said without looking up. "One hundred and eighty-seven dead."

"I'm sorry. Thank you."

Vegard went back upstairs and punched his pillow for a few minutes, growling with rage through clenched teeth. He wadded the pillow up, pressed it to his face, and screamed loud and long. Then he curled up on his bed. He wanted to hug his children. He wanted to march across Bifrost and shout at Odin. He wanted to, as the old man had put it, come up with something. The old man, with his rough gentle hands and his kindly seamed face and his grandchildren. That gentle, resigned old man, who was a year younger than Bård.

***

Bård had gone out with the idea of pounding the pavement until he found a craftsperson who could fix Gleipnir, but he had rapidly discovered that he would have to be more methodical than that. Varggrav was very big, and he was tempted to find it chaotic, except that he suspected it had a perfect logic he just didn't get. After an hour or two, he accepted that there would be no shortcuts, and nothing gained from running around in a panic. He would just have to get to know the place.

He understood Brynjar's haste now, and was grateful for it, but with their packs left behind in Asgard, there were things they would need. He bought clothes first from a secondhand place that sold them by weight. Then on one of the side streets that radiated from the pit like spokes, he passed a stall that sold the most gorgeous hoodies he'd ever seen, thick multicoloured things that the young proprietor told him she and her brothers had woven from reclaimed fibre. The city was warmer than the mountains above, but still cool enough to warrant extra layers. He bought one as a treat for himself and one for Vegard, and they were so amazingly cheap that he considered one for their baby brother Bjarte too. If there was still a world by next Christmas, he promised himself, he would come back for it. The proprietor told him where to find good new underwear, too. He bought two regular run-of-the-mill packages of boxer briefs, and two pairs of woven goat-hair boxers that were more expensive than the boxer briefs but still far cheaper than anything he could get up above, from a little tailed man with three teeth and a stag's horns.

In a little stall dominated by barrels of roots, shelves of glass jars, and braided charms he found toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, safety razors, and contact lens cleaning solution. He opted for blocky, sweet-smelling bars of homemade soap, shaving cream, shampoo and conditioner, and for Vegard, some eczema ointment to replace the prescription stuff he’d left in his pack in Asgard, and a tub of goop that a fellow shopper had assured him was just the thing for curls. "Thank you for your help," he said. "Can I ask you one more question, since you seem to know this place?" At her nod, he said, "I'm very new here, and I'm supposed to find someone who specializes in spells."

"For legit spells, the very best place is the forty-fourth level. If you want something a bit shady, you go to the seventh and watch your back."

Bård thanked her, and left the store. Forty-four was way up there. It was nearly teatime, but, he reminded himself resolutely, saving the world was more important than tea. First he grabbed something to eat. He found that he could get anything here, from smørbrød to pad thai, but the local cuisine seemed to be heavy on mushrooms, goat, and a kind of sourdough bread made from flour ground from lichens. He settled for something like a Cornish pasty, made from lichen flour and goat meat and cress that the seller assured him was locally grown. It was nice and portable, and he ate it as he rode the elevator up to the forty-fourth level. At first it tasted like dirt, but by the time the elevator hit his level, he had learned to appreciate the slight bitterness of the pastry, the rich flavour of the goat, and the earthiness of the sauce. 

Forty-four was old, and big, and close enough to the surface that he could see a pale circle of daylight high above him. The shops here had a more permanent feel than the stalls of the fourteenth floor. 

Bård went into one that proclaimed, in beautifully carved script inlaid with copper, that it was called Ny. He was prepared to be stared at, but he hadn't expected the shock--quickly concealed--on the face of the woman who stood behind the black marble counter. "Hi," he said. "I don't know if you can help me, but I'm looking for someone who can reforge the magical chain that bound Fenrir."

She answered him in Oslo dialect, but there was a carefulness to her words that suggested she had not grown up speaking it. "This is a body modification parlour. For women. Upperclass women."

"Oh," said Bård. "Sorry." He slunk out.

Next he tried a place that, he saw through the front window, had men in it, browsing through books and having quiet consultations with shopkeepers in slim-fit suits. As soon as he entered, he was greeted by one of these men, who was either genuinely pleased that he had come in or just very good at his job. 

But as Bård repeated his request, the young svartalfr's eyes got larger and larger, and his smile faded. "Oh honey," he said, when Bård was finished, "bless your heart for wanting to try, but if that's even possible, we can't help you here. This is a place that does...shall we say...romantic enhancements."

Bård was tempted to ask, but instead he said, "Do you have any idea where they _could_ help me?"

The man smiled sadly. "Sorry, no." But then he folded very delicate-looking hands across his chest and looked down meaningfully, and Bård saw that two fingers and one thumb were turned down. Seven. 

"Thanks," Bård said. 

"Good luck," the young man called after him.

Just to be sure, he tried at three more places. The last one actually sold chains, but the proprietor burst into bitter laughter when Bård asked about Gleipnir, and told him to go home to Bergen. That he took as a sign that it was time to go back to the boarding house.

As soon as the elevator doors opened on the fourteenth level, he felt a wave of breathless unease that he recognized as Vegard's distress. It hadn't been strong enough to reach him unbidden when he was thirty levels up, but now it flowed in like a tide. Had Vegard found out about Fenrir somehow? Had someone else told him? Bård would have expected anxiety and anger at himself, but he saw only sadness and guilt and a sense of massive unfairness.

As he entered the house and prepared to go upstairs, a tattooed young svartalfr jumped up from where he’d been perched on a couch in the common room. "Bård!"

Bård cocked his head curiously, and smiled, partly in greeting and partly at the renewed realization that his neck was better now, and this was one more thing that didn't hurt even a little. "Hi."

"Oh, you don’t know me," the young man said in Oslo dialect, eyes shining with adoration. "You knew my mom. My name is Per Kristtorn."

Bård’s eyes flew wide. "Oh my god. Okay. Wow. I'm sorry--can you wait for, I don't know, five minutes? I have to get this stuff upstairs and get you my brother. I know he'll want to meet you too."

"Absolutely," Per said. As he mounted the stairs, Bård could have sworn that he saw him do a little happy dance before sitting back down.

Bård put his key in the lock, and the door was pulled open. Vegard stood there, his hair sticking out in all directions. "Hi. Hi. Sorry." He stepped back to let Bård dump his purchases on the desk, and started--resumed, rather--pacing back and forth in the small room. 

"I felt something was wrong," Bård said. "What's up?"

Vegard paused, and ran his fingers through his hair again, and shook his head as if it were too much to articulate. Bård sent him a wave of comfort; Vegard reciprocated with an upwelling of memories of the young-old man and their conversation. 

"Christ," Bård whispered, his eyes overflowing. He sank to his bed, and took a few deep breaths. Vegard came over and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. Bård gave him a lost look and clasped his brother's arm and shared his own memories: Vinael, Fenrir, the fate of Odin, the nightmare flight through the tunnels, Dr. Torden's admonition. He wasn't sure what it would do to Vegard right now, but he couldn't wait any longer. 

Vegard rocked back on his heels, eyes very wide. "Okay," he said, rubbing his jawline vigorously. "Okay. That's what he meant. By wanting to live. We've got to do something, Bård."

"There's someone waiting downstairs for us," Bård said heavily. 

"Okay." Vegard sat down next to him. He put an arm across Bård's shoulders, and took five deep breaths, letting them out slowly. Then he gave the shoulder a squeeze, and got to his feet. "Okay."

Bård rose with him. "You haven't asked who it is."

"No," Vegard said as he opened the door, "because I'll find out in a second anyway, and because you've been carrying this around with you and you wouldn't just ask me to meet someone if it wasn't important."

Kristtorn was still waiting for them on the couch. He lit up and leapt to his feet when he saw them on the stairs, but then his face changed. "Are you two all right?" he asked. "Is this a bad time?"

"No and no," Bård said. "Vegard, this is Audhild Kristtorn's son Per."

Vegard shook the hand offered, and swallowed hard. "I think we should go and sit somewhere quiet. And I wouldn't say no to a good stiff drink."

***

Ten minutes later, they sat in the very back of a bar that was literally a hole in the wall, a side tunnel carved out of one of the streets that radiated from the pit. Bård was a little claustrophobic about it, but Vegard found that the clean smell of minerals and the coolness and the darkness and the quiet helped him collect his thoughts, and the local booze, drivstoff, was fuzzing their sharp edges. He and Bård each had a mug of it, warmed, with a wedge of apple, and they were both deep-breathing and passing a wave of calm back and forth.

Vegard's eyes shifted to Per, who had paid for the drivstoff and patiently watched them breathe at each other and was nursing what looked like a Coke. "You're not drinking?"

"No."

"I was so sorry to hear about your mum."

"Very sorry," Bård added.

"Thanks." Per's eyes ticked from brother to brother. "Are you okay?"

"Now," Vegard said, with a little nod.

"May I ask what happened?"

"Vegard didn't know about Fenrir," Bård explained. "I told him while you were waiting."

Per looked quizzical. "But you were _there_. Auntie Gisela said you were there, both of you."

"Yeah, but I hit my head," Vegard said sheepishly, his hand searching through his curls until he could rub the small stubbly spot. "I forgot the world was ending. And...other stuff." He laughed mirthlessly. "It's been a rough day."

"I'm sorry," Per said. Then he said, "I can help you. Auntie Gisela must have known I'd want to meet you, but she knew I could help, too."

"We need to find someone who can reforge Gleipnir," Bård said. "Someone--" He looked around him. "Someone said we'd have to go to the seventh level."

The young man choked on his Coke, and it took a bit of patting him on the back and mopping up with napkins for him to be able to continue. "Don't go to the seventh level. Who told you to go to the seventh level?"

"A guy on the forty-fourth level," Bård said, and told them the story.

By the end of it, Per was helpless with laughter, and even Vegard was giggling a little, mostly through osmosis. "Okay," Per said, when he got himself back under control, "what you just did is like, I don't know, like walking into a nail salon and asking them to build you a time machine. And going to the seventh level is like doing the same thing at a biker bar." He pulled out a phone and started texting. "I'm gonna get hold of someone, okay?" When he was done, he turned the phone upside down. "I know this is probably the last thing you want to hear right now, but I'm a huge Ylvis fanboy."

The brothers broke into smiles at the same time. Vegard couldn't speak for Bård, but after more than two weeks of being chased after by people who thought they'd done something terrible, it was a relief to have been sought out because of things they did well. 

"We’re very happy to meet a fanboy," Bård said with real warmth. 

"I used to listen to you on the radio when my mom was driving," Per told them. 

"She saved our lives," Vegard said.

"Yeah, she told me about that." Per grinned, but the grin suddenly faded. "Gods," he said to Vegard, "the morning after the Winter Solstice, something was wrong with her but she wouldn’t tell me. But she had the radio tuned to, like, one of our stations, and then I heard the news that Aruviel had killed you, and...she opened her arms and just held me." His eyes closed for a moment. Vegard patted his arm. Then Per opened his eyes and gave him a small, sad smile. "Now you’re sitting here and she’s gone."

"I’m sorry," the brothers said, almost in unison.

"Did Auntie Gisela tell you it was the Bright Court?"

"Yeah," Bård said. 

"Well, she said the fire was suspicious and the dálki wouldn’t investigate," Vegard put in.

"Yeah. Mom was holding an artifact for Aunt Mab. It was, we all knew it was dangerous. When..." Per shuddered involuntarily. "When the flames died down, I took it from her. Magicked it back to Aunt Mab. Which was stupid, it could have done to me what it did to her, but I hope you understand, I didn’t care. And Aunt Mab made sure the investigation didn’t go too far. She still has pull. Auntie Gisela doesn’t know any of that, though. She can’t know; she has to keep her nose twice as clean as everyone else’s." He put his chin in his hands glumly. "You know, you’re the first people I’ve told, ever?"

"Not even your friends?" Vegard asked.

"You’re going to meet my friends," Per told them. "They’re really invested in the idea that the Bright Court killed my mom. I mean, in a roundabout way it’s true. The Bright Court are the ones who declared some kinds of magic so evil that you can’t even keep the artifacts in a museum, which would have had proper wards and proper storage. But nobody arranged an accident or anything." His phone buzzed, and he checked it, and sent another text. "Mohammed thinks he might have a line on someone."

"Great," Bård said.

"So you moved here from Oslo?" Vegard said.

"I lived with Papa in Halden for a little while," Per said with a shrug. "We’re not really cut out for each other, though. He’s not a bad guy, just...I was angry, and I was sad, and I was tired of svartalfar saying I wasn’t really one of them because I hadn’t grown up in the tunnels, except it doesn’t matter a whit to the Bright Court, they treat us all like garbage. And they had a good school here, which I more or less promptly dropped out of. I wasn’t ready. I’m starting to feel like I might be now, but I--" His phone buzzed again, and he turned it face up. "I want to say sorry, except I’m really not, because sorry, this is more important than being polite."

"Oh, we know," Bård assured him. 

"Drink up," Per said, slipping the phone into his pocket and downing his Coke. "Mohammed’s expert can see us right now."

Bård left the remainder of his drivstoff on the table. Vegard, after a moment’s consideration, swallowed his, and ate the apple wedge, seeds and all.

Per took them up three levels. "The university’s just above," he explained, leading them through narrow winding streets. Most of the buildings here weren’t built, but rather carved right out of the rock. The effect could have been claustrophobic, but the façades were brightly painted, and many even had planters hanging from hooks on the front, floodlights or witchlights lending their strength to the streetlights so that these ingenious little front gardens were lush and green and healthy. Some of them were just cress and a few herbs, but Vegard also saw tomatoes, lettuce, strawberries, beans, and even a few stubby cucumbers. A basket of arugula reminded him that he’d slept through lunch and been too much of a wreck to come down for tea, which probably contributed to the shaky, breathless, panicked feeling that had threatened to overwhelm him since Bård had told him--and, for that matter, the slight drunken tiddliness that he was using to stave it off.

He pointed at the cotton twine running from upper windows to the hanging gardens in a sort of fan shape. "What’s with the string?" he asked.

"Irrigation," Per explained, looking up. 

"I see!" Bård exclaimed. "Instead of pulling up each basket and watering it, or trying to reach it with a wand, you water down the string. And then the string supports climbing plants, too."

"Exactly," Per said approvingly. "A lot of people do this brilliant thing with inverted two-litre soda bottles, where you just fill it a few times a day. When I was growing up, people kept telling me how backward the tunnels were, but they’re these really amazing centres of innovation. Which makes sense if you think about it."

"Necessity is the mother of invention," Vegard agreed, in Oxford English.

"And there’s a lot of need here," Per said. "Not only that, but the two biggest industries in Varggrav--in just about any svartalfar city I can think of--have always been mining, which requires a certain amount of ingenuity, and making clever things for the lios alfar, which you did if you couldn’t mine, to keep yourself from starving." He stopped at a curtained doorway, and rang a small bell. 

A svartalfr appeared, short and very wide. Her skin was dark but her hair was straight and blond, and caught up in a ponytail. She wore thick glasses. "You Per?" she said.

"I am," Per said, offering a hand.

She shook it. "Tora." 

"Bård," Bård said, offering his own hand.

"Vegard." Tora’s handshake was very firm. 

"You didn’t say I’d be working for humans," she said, leading them into a living room that was a chaos of circuit boards, cables, notebooks, charms, scattered gems, silk pouches, tools, jars of powder, short lengths of wire, case fans, pipettes, the skulls of small animals, and One Direction posters. 

"They’re authorized agents of Dr. Gisela Freidag," Per said. "They’re trying to stop Fenrir."

She snorted. "I don’t think he’s that dangerous."

"We watched him eat a god," Bård pointed out.

"What kind of god, though?"

"Homemade," Bård admitted.

"Artisanal," Vegard said.

"Well, that’s just it. And there’s no way he can end the world anymore. Maybe he could have a thousand years ago, but it’s not the same world. Good luck trying to eat the sun and the moon." She appeared to think it over. "I guess the fire could be managed, but all that’s really complicated for a wolf."

"There are people who believe that humans are supposed to supply the fire when they hear about a giant wolf running around," Per said wryly. "But he is rampaging through the countryside, and he is wreaking havoc. Well, maybe not him, he’s been captured in Bodø, but the idea of him is causing riots down south. Oslo is going wild and NUA suspended classes."

Tora cleared stacks of books and components off four chairs, so that they could all sit. "And this is my problem exactly how?"

"We can pay," Vegard said, one finger crooked against his lips. 

"It’s Gleipnir," Per added. "The impossible chain."

Tora sat down at a computer. This one also appeared to be running Linux. "Could be interesting. I don’t suppose you brought the specs?"

Bård closed his eyes and recited, "The sound of a cat's footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird." It had been in the Eddas, six impossible things to make the impossible chain.

"And an Easter egg," Vegard put in glumly.

"Hate to break it to you guys, but none of those are impossible anymore," she said. "Bird saliva is expensive, but if you need impossibility, we’re going to have to level up." She searched something, and clicked through the results. "Gleipnir’s public domain, so the exact... Here. Good. Hm." She moved very close to the screen and stared at it, hunched over. She made a face. "I don't think I can fix this. I mean, I don't think it's fixable as is."

"You're kidding," Bård said, his face going slack. 

Vegard sank into the chair she’d cleared for him. "B-b-but...this is the world we're talking about." His voice started to wobble. "The whole world. You have to, you have to--"

Tora lifted her chin. "Like I said, not necessarily. Not even probably, if you ask me. Maybe Scandinavia. But if you leave this with me, I'll see what I can do."

"What does that mean?" Bård demanded.

"Just what I said. I know the parameters of the problem. You need to hold a wolf who theoretically can’t be held. Even if I can't fix Gleipnir, maybe I can solve it another way. Give me until tomorrow. If I haven't got at least an idea by then, I'll have worked up a list of people who are likely to be able to help." 

The brothers exchanged a look. Per gave her a winning smile, and squeezed her shoulder. "That’s as much as we can ask for."

She looked at the hand on her shoulder with a raised eyebrow. "Why do men do that? Go all flirty when they’re asking for something?"

Vegard thought a minute. "Because we think that you'll be grateful for any attention we give you, so you’ll go the extra mile for us," he said finally.

"Vegard!" Bård said, aghast, and Per said nothing, but his mouth was hanging open.

"Oh," Vegard said, beginning to regret finishing that drink.

"Sorry, we’re sorry," Bård babbled. "He just blurts stuff out sometimes, he just--"

Tora held up a hand to hush him, and turned away. " _Thank you_ ," she said to Vegard. "I’ve always wondered that."

"But, but, it's not that you're not pretty," Per protested.

"Listen, guys, I won the genius lottery, and I'm not particularly greedy, so unless you’re Zayn Malik I don’t care what you think of me. I’m going to do my best on Gleipnir no matter what, and I’m not going to do it with my face, so I don't care about being pretty. Come back this time tomorrow. Per, I’ll call you if I need anything."

Outside, Bård punched Vegard in the arm. "Stupid! What if she’d been really angry? You might have just ended the world back there."

"But she asked," Vegard protested helplessly, rubbing his arm. "And isn’t that why?"

"I can see why Mom called you a holy fool," Per said with a little laugh. "You picked the one woman in the world who wouldn't be offended by that."

"I didn’t pick her," Vegard reminded him. "She asked. She shouldn’t ask if she was going to get offended at the answer."

"Whatever," Bård sighed. "Come on, Per. We need to get some food into my idiot brother."

***

_Excuse for news. This is Brynjar Kvam. Home news: Maria, Helene, please staying in again. Twenty-eight people have died in Oslo, with hundreds more injuried. So far no humans has been badly hurt in the Fenrir-panicking, but like many panickings of its kind it are woefully under-orchestrated, so unexpected developments may develop. Maria, Bård are missing you with an ache that borders on physical. He are thinking of you and the children and he knows you thinks of him._

 _Changeling news: Fenrir proceedeth ever eastward with the escort of twelve dálki officers, two civilian experts, one changeling, and one damp and pathetic wad of self-loathing whose all-consuming guiltitude are matched only by his utter obliviousness. One ward have decayed and been replaced; otherwise they hold, and the wolf has not even tried to escaping._

_Husband news: Bård and Vegard sit at a café with Per Kristtorn, number seven on Alpha’s celebrated Most Dangerous Thirty Under Thirty list, and huge Ylvis fanboy. Bård tastes the goat pie. The pastry are rich and flaky, a rare use of wheat flour to create a crust that melting exquisitely on the tongue. The sauce are pungent, the chief spices being pepper and tarragon, the goat itself simmered to perfect tenderness. Delight! He lower his fork, chewing precisely eight times before swallowing. Ah--he picks up his fork again! Vegard, who have insisted on paying for all, has rabbit stew, and are thinking of ordering dessert, but our dessertology team have indicated a seventy-eight percent chance that it will not agree with him. This have been the news, and I are still Brynjar Kvam._

***

Vegard was anxious and nauseous, but so utterly wrung out that he still went to bed very early, and was asleep within minutes. Bård lay awake going over everything that had gone wrong that day, the humiliations, the uncertainties, the missteps.

After an hour, he got up, and grabbed his phone. Their room was right next to the floor’s shared bathroom, so he heard every knock and gurgle of the plumbing, and he was satisfied that right now it was empty. 

Sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, he scrolled through the different games. Then he thought of something else, and clicked the phone off, and put it aside. He imagined himself back in the tunnel, terrified, using Vegard’s mind to make magic. He retraced his steps. Make a space, set up a resonance, and _push_.

He sang softly under his breath, and pushed a light into existence. It wasn’t comfortable-- it gave him, not quite pain, but something like it, a slightly jagged feeling--and the light faded almost immediately. But he’d done it, all on his own. 

Turning on the faucets proved to be too much of a challenge. He thought he saw the metal quiver, but right at that moment he knew he had to stop. But making the wet soap slide across the counter, that was okay. 

He went downstairs, and made himself a cup of tea from the cupboard of abandoned free food. He wasn’t sure what moving soap was going to do to save the world, but it had made him feel less helpless, like he’d accomplished something, which was exactly what he’d hoped it would do. Not bad, for a birthday gift. And he was so ready; he’d heard that thirty-three was a tricky age to be when your life was rapidly taking on mythic dimensions. 

When he went back to bed, he fell asleep quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Steve Vai's "Survive" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYGDZZX3OMk


	19. Adventures in Diplomacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brynjar checks in / Threshold / Irrigation (reprise) / Granfästning / The pinch / Ain't nuthin' but a Sidhe thing

Brynjar contacted both brothers the next morning, through their cell phones. "We are inside the Swedish border," he reported. "We has Fenrir. We are bringing him back. Progressification is slow, as there are speed reductions for oversized loads and we travelling only at night, and they will not let me drives."

"Nobody likes a giant all-devouring wolf," Vegard told him, "but particularly nobody likes a giant all-devouring wolf at Mach Three. We have someone looking at Gleipnir. She says...she can’t fix it, but she might be able to do something else."

"I knows, Vegard. I sees it. I sees also that you are very, very well, to my relievedness. I have been telling your wives."

"Mostly well. I don’t know what kind of berry that cheesecake was made of, but my guts are still roiling."

"Why didn’t you just say, Hurry, he’s bleeding into his brain?" Bård demanded irritably. 

"Between his brain and his skull," Brynjar corrected. "Vegard’s life depended on the two of you going quickly and carefully and easily, not rushing all panicsome. Had I knowed that Fenrir would spend his appetite on sheep, I would had dropped you closer to the city, but we thought him far more dangerous than he have been so far."

"Are you and Finn all right?" Bård asked.

"We are intact. I worrying a little about Finn, so close to Fenrir."

"As you keep reminding us, you heal fast."

"From some things," Brynjar agreed. "I will contact again tomorrow for updates, or sooner if you need." The line went dead. 

"Bye, Brynjar," Bård said dryly.

The phones came to life again. "Goodbye, gentle Ylvisåkers."

***

Vegard had gone out in the morning and bought Bård a slightly late gift, a traditional svartalfar stringed instrument called a lyngepause. They spent most of the rest of the morning putting it together, and the afternoon participating in a jam on the boarding house’s front porch. A middle-aged svartalfr woman who had lost both of her legs in a mining accident taught Bård how to play the lyngepause before accompanying them on a seljefløyte. Vegard sang runs of wordless quarter-tone melismas, and other musicians, tenants and a few passers-by, faded in and out with langeleiks, guitars, various kinds of drums, and Uilleann pipes. It was a day late, but if he couldn’t be with his family, it was the best birthday gift that Bård could imagine.

Per was due to meet them at the house at 19.00. They would eat together, visit Tora at 20.00, and then afterward meet up with Per’s friends, who he assured them would be an asset in whatever they needed to do next. But by 19.30, there was still no Per. Vegard sent a text, and received no response. At 19.45, he said, "Do we start out to Tora’s, or eat dinner here and wait?"

"I don’t want to keep Tora waiting when the fate of the world possibly hangs in the balance," Bård said, "But I have no idea where exactly she lives."

Vegard got up from the couch in the common room, and disappeared for a few moments. When he returned, he went right to the door. "Let’s go. We’ll go up to seventeen, and grab something on the way."

Bård levered himself to his feet. "Did you hear from him?" 

"No, but dinner is cream of celery soup."

They grabbed curried goat roti--Finland-style, the stall-minder had told them proudly--and ate as they walked. The text from Per came just as they were getting on the elevator. "Sry. Big stuf. Meet 17 ASAP?" They both sent replies, and waited for him on level seventeen, at the approach to the elevators. These seemed unusually busy at the moment, and the conversations of the people coming off them seemed quite animated, even heated. 

Per got off the elevator with a bunch of other people...and the other people came right up to Bård and Vegard with him. "Hi," he said, with a sunny smile. There was a subtle shift in his demeanour from last night. He was being...professional. "Really sorry to keep you waiting. The borgarstjórn had an emergency town hall meeting on the fiftieth floor. Malin here found out about it at 16.30, and it started at 17.00. We thought it was really important to go, and I had to turn off my phone."

"Of course," Vegard said. 

"Shall we get going?" Bård said.

"All right. Very quickly: Stian, Fareshta, Astrid, Mohammed, Marius, Malin, Vigdis. People, Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker, humans who were present at the release of Fenrir and have been temporarily designated as Gisela Freidag’s agents in Varggrav."

"What does our mayor say about all this?" Stian asked as they started to walk. "I’m not fond of him, but he is democratically elected."

"You just heard what our elected representative said," Mohammed shot back. "We take our cues from the Bright Court. As always."

"The Bright Court engineered this!" Vigdis said, clenching her fists. "That’s not conspiracy theory or paranoia or conjecture or anything; we watched Lirikael Vinael himself give a bloody speech. ‘This is what I’m going to do, and this is why I’m doing it.’ How much clearer does it get?"

"And then watched the rest of the Bright Court scramble to disassociate themselves from him," Marius laughed. 

"The city government is considering how to respond to...the Fenrir issue," Per explained to Vegard and Bård. "There’s some anxiety, but the consensus is that it’s not likely to affect us at all. There are svartalfar separatists who have even raised the possibility of severing all ties to the surface, closing up the tunnels, and weathering whatever comes, be it Surt or nuclear fire or Fenrir or war or just more of the same nonsense the svartalfar have endured for millennia."

"Nuclear fire is off the table," Fareshta said.

"Is it?" Vigdis pressed. "Freidag just said ‘human sources.’ Which human sources? What authority do they have to make that call?"

Bård raised his hand. "Yeah, that was me."

"You?" Vegard demanded. "When?"

"On the phone with Gisela, back at the hospital. Well, and if you don’t believe me, listen: Vegard, will the humans nuke Fenrir?"

"No!" Vegard said, as if it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. "That is, I can think of some people who would be stupid enough to do it, but they don’t get to make those kinds of decisions right now, thank goodness."

"No offence," Stian said, "but politics is a little bit more demanding than sticking hidden cameras in elevators."

"Yes," Bård returned mildly, "but when we say something about our species, we usually know what we’re talking about."

They had stopped walking, and Bård momentarily thought he had just escalated things in a way he hadn’t meant to, but when he looked around, he saw that they were at Tora’s door. "Bård, Vegard, we’re going in," Per said. "Can you lot wait outside for us?"

Someone muttered something about back-room dealings, and was quickly shushed. 

Tora came to the door, glared at Per’s friends, and admitted Per, Vegard, and Bård. The exchange had made Bård forget his nervousness about what she’d say; now it returned. 

"An impossibility-based solution wasn’t possible," Tora said as she led them through her cluttered workroom, "and I tried to work with that for a little while, but the impossibilities don’t line up correctly, and anything you could use to force them into alignment would decay over time, giving you the exact same problem as any other kind of magical fetter." She swept a stack of papers off one chair, pulled it to the computer, and started clicking through diagrams. "See? You just can’t make it work." She closed down those diagrams, and opened another folder. "Then I considered smartblocking, which is very energy-efficient and notoriously impervious, but it’s very high-maintenance, so I just sort of parked that thought as possible but impractical."

Bård and Vegard exchanged a look She was taking forever to get to the point, but if she’d thrown away one idea as impractical, she must have something better.

" _This_ ," she said, spinning abruptly in her chair and thrusting a piece of paper under their noses, "is DNA-keyed threshold technology. Technically banned under the new law, probably for good reason, ‘cause I can think of all kinds of nasty ways to use this. You give the spell a DNA sample, set it across, like, a doorway or a border or something, and it’s impossible for the entity with that exact DNA to cross. It’s simple, but it’s permanent, so you want to be really sure."

"Oh, we’re sure," Per said.

"I mean, about where you put Fenrir. You can’t come back a decade or a century later and said, Ooh, we could use this place for storage, time to move the giant wolf. The other catch, and the reason I haven’t done this for you yet, is that like I said, it was just banned. I’m not much of a law and order person, but I don’t exactly want my crowning achievement to be something I can’t tell anyone about under pain of incarceration. First of all, is this what you want? Or would you rather that I pursue smartblocking?"

The three shared a look. "If this was what we wanted," Vegard said, "what would you need?"

"A dispensation," Tora said. "Amnesty. Something."

Per pulled out his phone, and thumbed through his contacts. "Hi. Auntie Gisela. Yeah, actually. They’re awesome! Well, yeah...we have a couple of options. One is smartblocking, which is really high-maintenance. The other is more permanent, but it uses tech that was just banned. Tora would need a special dispensation to work on it. Yeah, we do. Can you? Okay, cool. Cool. Thank you, Auntie. Love you too." He hung up.

"As easy as that?" Bård said.

"The Samkoma is having an emergency meeting tomorrow anyway," Per said. "She’s going to put it to them. She says she thinks they’ll go for it." 

"Okay," Tora said. "If you’re in a hurry, I can work on it tonight, but if you get a no tomorrow, I’d still have to charge you for the time. Do you want me to do that?"

Bård and Vegard looked to Per; Per looked back at them, and Bård realized that while Per was the one with the connections and the knowledge, he and Vegard were the ones with the authority. It didn't feel great, but there it was. "Yeah," he said finally.

"Yeah," Vegard agreed.

"All right. I’ll push it. And if you get a yes tomorrow morning, I think I can have something ready for you within twenty-four hours after that."

The brothers exchanged a look, and as one, sagged with relief, silly smiles crossing their faces. "Tora," Vegard said, "you’re brilliant." He spread his arms wide. "How about a hug?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Hug me after I get it done, if you must."

***

The others were talking outside, but lapsed into an expectant silence when Vegard and Bård and Per joined them. Per grinned. "She’s got a fix."

It was a beautiful thing, to see the tension run out of so many bodies at once. 

"It’s one of the things that got banned, so she’ll need a special dispensation from the Samkoma," Per said. 

"She won’t get it," Vigdis opined. "The Bright Court controls the Samkoma, and they caused this. They want everything to burn."

"They want us to burn," Stian corrected. "And they can wait it out in Hodmímmis holt. They won’t say yes. They’ll probably do everything they can to stop her."

"I must admit, sealing up the tunnels is kind of attractive to me," another one of Per’s friends said. Bård couldn’t remember whether it was Malin or Astrid. "Whether they can stop Fenrir or not. Just close everything up and move forward on our own."

"What about the people who need medicines?" Per said, as if he had said it many times over. "What about the people whose livelihoods depend on imports?"

"You didn’t grow up in the tunnels," Astrid--Bård was pretty sure it was Astrid--shot back. "You don’t know what it’s like."

"I did grow up in the tunnels," Marius countered, "and I agree with him. You don’t get to just decide that your needs are more important than this whole group of other people’s."

One of them named a place, then, and they started to walk. "What happens if the tunnels get sealed?" Vegard demanded. 

"If it comes to that, they’ll probably just close them right up," Per said. "Right now the city’s taking its cues from the Samkoma and the situation itself, so there’s no plan. I mean, there’s always a _plan_ , but it would take an emergency to put that plan into effect. That means there won’t be any kind of...deciding who stays and who doesn’t. There might be a few hours’ warning, if you want to get out and take your chances outside, but if it gets that desperate, they’re not going to do any more than that. Nobody’s going to kick you out."

"And our families?" Bård said.

"You don’t _leave_ your family," Astrid said witheringly. 

Per glared at her, and put a hand on each of the brothers’ shoulders. "We just have to make the fix work, hey? They haven’t decided yet. They haven’t decided about anything. Unfortunately, that also means they haven’t decided to support, you know, you guys. This thing. Replacing Gleipnir. So whatever we plan tonight, we plan it knowing that we can’t expect the cavalry."

They went to a nearly-empty bar, this one a bit nicer than last night’s, with whitewashed walls and brass lamps that cast a golden light on the blond wood, and ordered a couple of pitchers of a local draft, something dark and rich for a population that probably needed all the nourishment it could get--like miners, or poor students. The group asked Bård and Vegard about specifics: when and where did they expect Fenrir to be returned? They couldn’t answer, but Bård’s phone rang, and then Brynjar answered: in about twenty-four hours, with a dálki escort, via the Swedish village of Kvikkjokk, and if a suitable place could be found, they would find a way to get Fenrir there.

At the end of the evening, they had a tentative plan, and a list of things to do before the changelings returned. First and foremost, a new prison had to be found for Fenrir--someplace secure, someplace permanent. Per and some of his friends had gadflies, which would traverse the tunnels quickly, and they would spend tomorrow exploring. There was some consternation about the dálki escort, with half of the group arguing that Fenrir made allies of them all and half arguing that the dálki were tools of the Bright Court and could never be trusted. Eventually, that problem was shelved, to be taken up with Brynjar the next time he got in contact. 

They left the bar in the wee hours of the morning, discernible in the city by a slight dimming of the streetlights. Ordinarily Bård and Vegard would have tapped out a lot earlier, but if the changelings were expecting to show up at night, it made sense to adjust their schedules. The decision, in retrospect, probably saved their lives. 

Per's group had moved on ahead, talking about plans and politics in ways that the brothers didn't feel like they needed to be there for. They hung back, sharing a companionable silence--that is, until Vegard, eyeing the little hanging gardens, said, "Hey, do you know what the largest irrigated crop in the US is?"

"What? I don't...um...corn?" Bård saw Vegard's face change. "Soy?"

Hands fell on his shoulders, jerking him back into the shadows, and at the same time he saw Vegard pulled away from him. Before he could cry out, there was a hand over his mouth, and someone was chanting something that scrambled his thoughts. As his consciousness started to unravel, it seemed to him that there was an electronic cacophony somewhere in the distance...

He fell hard, and the jolt brought him back to himself. Then someone kicked him in the side, and a heavy weight fell on top of him, knocking the wind out of him before it was pulled away. When he could finally take a breath, he lay dazed, thinking he really should get up, but not sure how it would go over.

Vegard, rumpled and out of breath, knelt by him, Per at his shoulder. "Bård?"

"Wheat?"

"Thank gods," Per breathed. 

"Are you hurt?" Vegard asked, helping him sit up.

"Bruised. Banged my head a little."

"Brynjar?" Vegard called.

"Says he's fine," Stian's voice said. 

"Your friend...called," Per explained. "All of us. He said, 'Behind you.'"

"Men," Bård said. "Grabbed us." He looked at Vegard. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Mine was a woman, though. Astrid chased her off. And Vigdis got your guy." Bård looked in the direction that Vegard was pointing, and saw Vigdis kneeling on a burly svartalfr's chest. The man's hand was bloodied, but Vigdis was staring down at him with her lower lip between her teeth and a wild joy in her eyes. 

Bård squinted bewilderedly at the man's features. "Svartalfr?"

Per's shoulders sagged. "We're not all monsters, but we're not all fabulous either."

Vigdis ground her knee into the man's crotch until he cried out, and both Bård and Vegard winced in sympathy. "Who d'you work for?"

"No one. I just--ahhh!"

"Stop, stop," Bård begged, crossing his legs. 

"You think protecting humans is going to make them protect us?" the man demanded in a strangled voice. "They'll murder us all--them and the Bright Court."

"We're not going to murder anyone," Vegard said, with a bit of heat. "We're trying to get rid of Fenrir."

"We don't need you to make things better," the man said. 

Malin joined Vigdis, and together they jerked Bård's assailant to his feet. "We'll keep an eye on this guy," Malin said. "You get the humans home."

Per nodded once, sharply. Together he and Vegard helped Bård stand. 

"Are you okay?" Bård thought to ask Vegard. 

"Fine. A little muzzy from the stuff on the cloth, but they taught me in the army how to block the hold she used on me, and Astrid is really fast."

"What about the dálki?" Bård said. 

Fereshta laughed bitterly. "Only if you want all of us brought in. Haven't you learned anything? They're not on your side, and they're sure not on ours."

"Come on," Per said gently. "I'll take you back to..." He cast a wary look back at the man, still in the grip of Vigdis and Malin. "...to where you're staying."

"I'll come with," Mohammed said, "in case anyone tries anything again."

"You think this could happen again?" Vegard said, rubbing the side of his neck anxiously. 

"If you want to send a message to someone," Mohammed said, "you scare them. Maybe you even beat them. These people tried to kidnap you. Whatever they were telling themselves, you were _wanted_." 

Bård wrapped his arms around himself. A moment later, he was surprised to find other arms wrapped around him, and he startled, but it was just Per. "Sorry," Per said, stepping back. "You just looked like you needed it." 

Bård gave him a nervous laugh. "Yeah. Yeah I do." He held his arms open, and let Per hug him. It was a good hug. And then of course Vegard had to have a hug from Per too. 

In the elevator, Bård said, "So, what _is_ the largest irrigated crop in the US?"

"Grass," Mohammed said. 

"Seriously?"

"Grass," Vegard agreed, and the doors opened. 

Per and Mohammed accompanied them to the boarding house, and even waited in the hall while the brothers checked out their room, but everything seemed clear. Vegard offered to get them a room here, so that they wouldn't have to walk home, but they politely declined. As late as it was, neither he nor Bård went to bed until both men had texted them, reporting that they'd arrived home safe.

***

Fenrir and his escort had been travelling only after sundown, partly out of courtesy for the mostly human motorists with whom they shared the road, and partly because maintaining glamour in full daylight took a lot more energy. For the first two days of travel, they had stopped at motels, and parked the cars and the cage and trailer in a hastily constructed null pocket, of the sort that had made Vegard so sick at Korgfjelltunnelen. Today, though, their route took them past Granfästning, the stronghold of the Thiradiel family, and the dálki had called ahead and arranged quarters.

This was how it happened: not long after the day had dawned overcast and drizzly, brightness collected in the middle of the otherwise empty E45, ahead of the escort car. It grew into a warm green-gold shimmering window, through which Kalliope and Mirael Thiradiel and their daughter Eulalia were visible in formal dress, against the backdrop of a meadow. They waved the vehicles into the portal, which led to pastureland suspended in the perpetual midsummer of Ljosalfheim.

When they were all inside, the portal began to shrink...and then Lady Thiradiel’s eyes widened in surprise, and with a gesture she flung the portal open again, and Sleipnir scuttled through. Brynjar scrambled out of the cab of the truck and flung his arms around the horse's neck, and she lipped at his hair. Ever since she’d delivered him, unconscious, to the dálki, she had been following the convoy--Finn had seen her, every so often, when the sky cleared and the moon lit the forest--but this was the first time she had made her continued presence known to anyone else. 

"Welcome to Granfästning," Lady Thiradiel said, her voice light and musical. "Be merry and of good heart. We have rooms for each of you, with warm baths run and fresh clothes laid out, and Odd has prepared a fine meal. We have pigs for the wolf, and oats for your...um... horse."

The dálki officers eagerly left their cars and followed the Thiradiels. Jessalyn trailed along. Melantha and Brynjar hung back at the front of the cage. Melantha ran a hand through Finn’s rain-damp curls. He turned his head and favoured her with a weary smile. "Please come in with us," she said. "Stop punishing yourself."

He laughed. "It’s hardly punishment. It’s beautiful here. Give me awhile to soak up the sunshine."

This had become a routine. He would never say no to Melantha, but he had not left Fenrir’s side in three days. 

"Come," Brynjar said gently. "If this are the place he feeling he needs to be, we are not the ones to gainsay him."

"He’s cold as ice," Melantha countered. "He hasn’t eaten a proper meal in three days. If he were human he might even be dead by now."

"But I’m not human," Finn pointed out. "And I’m warming up already." He made a show of unhooking the harness and stretching out luxuriously in front of the cage. 

"Come," Brynjar said, taking Melantha’s hand. He cast a look back at Finn. The blue eye was pitying; the grey eye was unfathomable, but looking into it, Finn knew that Brynjar understood: this was exactly where he was supposed to be.

***

Lirikael Vinael prided himself on being broad-minded and well read. That sort of thing was necessary for an engaged citizenry, and particularly for a leader. You needed to be able to place things into a broader context, recognize patterns, figure out how things fit. Sometimes it gave you an idea of how to act in the face of adversity. Sometimes it just gave you the strength to keep going.

What he was experiencing now was something that human philosopher Syd Field called "the pinch"--the moment, prior to the final battle, in which the hero lost everything. The svartalfar of Varggrav were claiming to have found a way to recapture Fenrir, and although nothing was said, he knew that Vegard Ylvisåker had something to do with it. His polling numbers had plunged, and this morning an emergency meeting of the Samkoma had censured him and stripped him of his magisteriate. Syl had gone to visit her parents. His own parents had cut him off. Even Aruviel had stopped taking his calls, and that hurt the most, because it really wasn’t like the old man had anything better to do. 

Vinael let himself feel the pain. It was perfectly natural, that it would hurt. But it was also the way of things, to be pared down to nearly nothing, to find support peeling away from him. He wouldn’t let it sway him from his purpose. In victory, he would prove himself worthy.

He made some calls. He had to make a lot of them, because many of his former supporters had fallen away when things got too uncomfortable. So be it; they would all see. Eventually, though, he assembled a small group of the most loyal, from all over the country. He named a rendezvous point, and they readily agreed. 

They had--in addition to the virtue of their cause--a weapon. Vinael had spent the last few days doing research on various magical weapons, trying to gauge which would be most effective against a mage as powerful as Vegard, but the answer had come from a supporter at NUA, who had run across a curious thing in the university’s interloan logs. It seemed that Vegard had a weakness, and that weakness was now being held for Vinael at a secure location.

As he cleaned the last of his things out of his office, he said a quiet prayer to Frey, the god of the elves. He’d taken to praying to Frey since Odin’s betrayal. Maybe Frey was the one they should have resurrected, but Odin had seemed stronger, more no-nonsense, the better bet at the time. He supposed there was a lesson to be learned, there, about branding versus substance.

The picture of Syl went safely into the box, where it would be protected, as he had done everything to protect her. She’d come around, surely. They’d have a lot of time to spend together in Hodmimmís holt. He was sure he could talk her out of her anger, and anyway she would need someone around for the baby, wouldn’t she? 

The picture of Vegard staring menacingly down at the camera was on top. Face up. It was superstitious nonsense, but he didn’t want it looking at his stuff...and he wanted to be able to see it. Now more than ever, he needed the reminder of what would be unleashed on the world if he gave up. 

He was going to go to Varggrav. He was going to see this thing through. He was going to put an end to the svartalfar and Vegard Ylvisåker and all of their dark magic, and pave the way for a new, clean, innocent Midgard where his child could grow up without fear. Lirikael Vinael set his mouth, picked up his box, and left his office.

***

The first thing that woke Finn was the sunlight glinting on the knife poised over his throat, but it was nearly simultaneous with Fenrir's menacing growl. "Be so still," he murmured at the girl crouched above him. "Relax and move away slowly. I'll move so he goes for me."

Instead, she slashed out with the knife, opening up his palm and wrist. Fenrir snarled and his head darted out to a place where there really should have been cage, but Finn rolled suddenly, and the teeth just missed his back as he and Eulalia tumbled off the back of the trailer and into the grass. 

He was on top of her now. "Go on," she hissed. "Disfigure me, torture me, carve the flesh from my bones. You cannot defeat the light. I will vanquish the dark one in my home, just as I have unleashed Fenrir to vanquish the svartalfar in Midgard."

Finn grimaced in pain, tucking the wounded hand under his jacket, and tried to shift back and away. "Really, I'm probably just going to tell your parents."

She reached up and tried to strangle him. 

Then hooves pressed against him and teeth clamped onto the back of his sweater, lifting him away from her. Her hands fell away from his throat. Sleipnir set him down in a little heap on the ground, and planted herself in front of Eulalia. The girl tried to backpedal, but suddenly two exquisitely beautiful elven women were there, clad in flowing silk, holding her securely.

"Daughter," Lady Thiradiel barked from the edge of the meadow, "what is the meaning of this?"

"You saw," Eulalia said, bursting into tears. "I thought he was going to kill me."

"Oh, you don't," one of the elven women said softly, and Finn realized with a jolt that it was Jessalyn, in a nightdress. "You _don't_."

Lady Thiradiel's nostrils flared. "These are guests in our home, _and_ they are saving the world."

"Whoa whoa whoa," said Finn, scrambling up. "The important part is, that's not what I was doing, right? I was keeping her away from the wolf, and vice versa."

"I don't care what the wolf does to me," Eulalia said, lifting her chin, "so long as the world is cleansed."

"Honey!" Mirael Thiradiel cried at his wife's side. He rushed forward, but Fenrir, crouched next to the wreckage of the cage, took a snap at him and he backed off. 

"Got her?" the other elven woman--ye gods, Melantha!--asked Jessalyn, and at her sister's nod, let go of Eulalia, drew the sword buckled hastily over her own nightdress, and advanced on the wolf.

Finn could have sworn that for the barest moment, Fenrir rolled his eyes. Then with a snort and a low growl, he slunk back into the splintered ruin of the cage, and curled up, staring at her balefully. Then she traded off, taking hold of Eulalia again while Jessalyn recast the most basic of the trap spells. 

"Is...is that really necessary?" Lord Thiradiel asked.

"I just hope it can hold him until we get the cage fixed," Jessalyn said. 

"No, I mean...my daughter. Holding her like that."

Brynjar appeared behind them, bleary-eyed and tousle-headed and clad only in tighty-whiteys and a pair of fluffy purple slippers. "She sawed through the cage and tried to murdering my friend," he yawned. "This is chalkable to youthful exuberificence, but we does need to prevent her."

Another vision of elven loveliness appeared in the meadow, blinking and sleepy-eyed but carrying handcuffs, and Officer Sorael said, "Hand her over to me, girls."

"We are so sorry," Lord Thiradiel said. 

"This is very embarrassing," added Her Ladyship. To Officer Sorael she said, "It's her brother, you know. She talks to him online. He has these funny romantic notions."

"I know the sort," Officer Sorael said, cuffing Eulalia's hands behind her. "We're going to have a good talk, young lady."

Brynjar approached Finn, who was starting to sway on his feet. "Your penance have served its purpose. Come to your room now."

"I'm okay, Brynjar."

Brynjar reached out, and caught Finn's chin between his thumb and the knuckle of his index finger, making him meet the grey eye's gaze. "This journey are not the hard part. What comes next are the hard part. We needing you strong and rested."

"I _was_ resting. I--"

He was interrupted by a low growl. And Jessalyn snapped, "For Frey's sake, Finn, go to bed and let me do my work. You're making Fenrir restless."

Finn was beginning to suspect that he wasn't going to win this one. Melantha was coming to him, reaching for him, saying something that seemed unusually far-off. He turned to ask her if she, too, was ganging up on him, and swooned into her arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Kate Bush's "Rubberband Girl" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85wZw1O83aE
> 
> Also, I spent an entire afternoon trying to figure out the name of that thing Vegard does with his singing voice when his brother teases him about being Turkish. After hours of research, Googling "quarter-tone melismas" led me to Tunisian percussionist Imed Alibi's "Staring at the Sand," which has nothing to do with the current story but is nevertheless phenomenal, and which is excerpted here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsFW9d5IqYs


	20. Drawn Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The calling / Impostor syndrome / Galateon / Several bargains / Counterintuitive survival strategy #8: knocking / Underworld

Bård and Vegard awoke just in time to get down to the boarding house's dining room for lunch. When they were both back from their meal and their showers, their phones came to life. "Hello, gentle Ylvisåkers," Brynjar singsonged. "I has good news and I has bad news."

"Bad news first," Vegard sighed, working goop through his hair. It wasn't KMS, but it smelled good, and it did make his curls manageable. 

"The daughter of the Bright Court family who have kindly consented to billet us this day have different politics from her parents. She have destructed Fenrir's cage. We are repairificating it, and she are very grounded, but our departure will be somewhat later. And this are suiting us just fine, because we all needs a rest."

It was going to suit them well too, Vegard thought, because Per and those of his friends who didn’t have day jobs were still out scouting. "And the good news?" Bård asked. 

"Riddari Sorael of the Bodø dálki assureth me that although they must following Fenrir to his destination, they has no interest in surveilling or arresting or harassing svartalfar; that just in case she will gives her officers instructions to not even attentionate the faces of your helpers. They may even wearing masks if they like. I know this is not the fullness of what was wanted, but I trusting her. She know Finn and I are changelings. She know Finn and I are _your_ changelings. She has said nothing. Betwixt thee and me, she have lied to the Peace Division to conceal and protect us."

"Good to know," Bård said. "We'll pass it along."

***

_Excuse me for news. This is Brynjar Kvam. First the traffics report: Magnus, back on the curb. Back on the curb NOW! Thank you. You saw it not, but I has just saved your life._

_Oslo news: The death toll are up to sixty-seven in the Oslo area, includinging twelve humans, after mage battles in Homansbyen and Lillestrom causinged car accidents and collapsed a scaffolding. Maria, Helene, please all stay in, and warn the friends and family. Very sorry._

_Magnus, yes this is serious, and no you does not need snuff that badly. Also warning to your friends and family, but you and Calle are called upon. Both of you go home, packs for overnight, rents a car, and come together to Kvikkjokk. Do not attempting to fly. Taking no tunnels until you are left from Oslo. It are a long story and I do not have time to tell it._

_Happily, in political news, the Samkoma have granted special dispensation to Tora Jordiskehelten to build new confinement for Fenrir, and voted 77-22 to censure Lirikael Vinael and strip him of his junior magisteriate. He are, alas, undaunted._

_Varggrav news: Vegard and Bård are safe but impatient and homesick. Bård’s lyngepause playing improves by leaps and bounds, while Vegard pursues retail therapy. Per Kristtorn and company have securified a new home for Fenrir. It are a cave, geologically stable, spacious for an underground chamber, and out of the way. Tora Jordiskehelten have run into problems earlier today with a failuring containment model, but were able to make the necessarious adjustmentations, and anticipate that her new containment system will be ready by this evening._

_Changeling news: After a setback in which the daughter of our most gracious hosts have attempted to free the wolf and throttle my companion, the cage are nearly repaired, and Finn are nearly recovered. Our departure are delayed by some hours, but not much, and we still expect to returning Fenrir tonight._

_I remain, as always, Brynjar Kvam._

***

Finn came to in a darkened room, in a soft clean bed. He had been bathed and dressed in satin pyjamas, and his hand had been bandaged. He felt like he’d lost a great battle.

"How do you feel?" a male voice asked. 

His own voice was indistinct. "I don’t know. Tired. Thirsty."

An arm around his shoulders helped him sit up, and a cup was put to his lips. Water, room temperature. He drained the glass, and another was poured, which he drank immediately.

The lights came up, softly. His nurse was Lord Mirael Thiradiel. Finn’s face must have betrayed shock, because the elf-lord smiled. "I was a field medic in the Victory of the Light."

He must know that Finn was a changeling. If he’d done the bandaging, he must have seen the sap. Finn glanced at his hand.

Mirael put two gentle fingers in the centre of Finn’s palm. "Does this hurt?"

"No." The elf unwound the bandage. The cut was now a clean red line. Finn saw that knitting glyphs had been penned on either side of the wound. "You didn’t need to do that," he murmured.

"Changelings are tough, but not indestructible. You wore yourself out to the point that you weren’t healing on your own. The sleep will have helped. Food will too." Mirael stood up just long enough to pull a braided gold rope above the headboard, and then sat back down at his side. "There. Odd has been keeping porridge hot for you. Your friends said you haven’t eaten in three days."

"Why are you helping me?"

"Because it’s my training. Because you saved my daughter’s life when she was trying to take yours. Because you’re saving the world. Because you need it. Because I owe a debt to your kind for the brutalities I visited on you in my youth. Because you haven't been helping yourself. Take your pick. We're not all brightists. Or at least, some of us try very hard not to be."

There was a knock, and before either could answer, the door opened. It was Melantha, carrying a tray of porridge with dates and cashews and cream. "Odd said to send this up," she said. She’d gotten dressed in jeans and a sweater, and no longer wore the flowing silk, but her hair was still down. It had a touch of red in it. She stroked Finn’s curls, and although he was strongly tempted to reach up and reciprocate, he kept his hands to himself. "How are you feeling, sweetness?"

He smiled up at her. It was impossible not to. "Weak. But better." He looked up at Lord Thiradiel. "Thank you for taking such good care of me, m’lord."

"All we can do is take care of each other," the elf-lord said. He put a hand on Finn’s shoulder, and his voice became stern. "And sometimes, we take care of care of each other by taking care of ourselves. You have miles to go, my son, and your friends--and Fenrir, and perhaps the whole world--are depending on you. I pray to Freyja that by the time you have discharged your duties to them, you have found the will to keep going on your own."

"There’s not much left to do," Finn said, between mouthfuls of porridge. The food was making him feel better than he would have thought possible, and he wondered how much of his melancholy had been sustained by hunger. "We just deliver Fenrir to his prison and V-- And our allies set the spell."

Mirael shook his head a little, frowning. His eyes shifted from Finn to Melantha. "I shouldn’t be telling you this," he sighed. "This afternoon I got an e-mail from my grown son. Eulalia’s older brother, whose best and noblest impulses have been harnessed by what even a decade ago we could laugh off as the lunatic fringe. It is clearly a farewell letter, and his mother and I are very naturally upset, although we suspect that, as he has many times previously, he is being overly dramatic. He declares that he is off to fight the forces of evil that seek to reverse the cleansing Lirikael Vinael has begun--forces of evil which, as far as I can tell based on personal observation and media reports, amount to a couple of damaged changelings, fourteen very nice lios alfar, one svartalfr craftswoman, and a human cabaret duo. He warns me that he may not return, that ‘our’ enemies--" He made scare quotes with his fingers. "--may visit the most horrible tortures on him, but he wants us to know that he loves us and forgives us for our complacency." 

Melantha smiled. "You may rest assured, Lord Thiradiel, that my comrades will refrain from visiting the most horrible tortures on your son."

Finn looked at her askance. "Your comrades? What are _you_ planning to do?"

She offered him a sweet smile, and rearranged his curls again. "Jessalyn and I talked today. Lios alfar...do not have a history of good behaviour in the tunnels, and we’ve been told before that our presence there would be triggery for some people."

Finn let his spoon clatter into the porridge bowl. "But...but...you’re _helping_. It’s not fair..."

She shrugged. "It’s not fair to have built an entire culture around keeping the svartalfar out of our spaces, but to expect to be welcome in theirs. Besides, there...might be something else we can do." Melantha took up his hand, stroking it. "We’ll take you as far as we can." Then she sat down on the bed, and wrapped an arm around him, and held him close for one wonderful moment. "You get yourself ready to move out; I'll tell the folks downstairs that they might have to be on their guard in the tunnels." Then she gave him a final squeeze, kissed his temple, and left.

Dazedly, Finn touched his fingertips to his temple. "It's not what it looks like," he assured the elf-lord. "She has a bit of a crush on my original. I don't take advantage, I swear."

"I see," Lord Thiradiel said dryly. The skepticism in his tone hurt, but, Finn reminded himself, he had behaved impeccably, and he could do nothing further.

***

The convoy of dálki followed the road for as long as they could, but eventually, with the peak of Pårtetjåkka looming in the distance, it petered out into gravel. Kvikkjokk was more of an outpost than even a village, really, and their presence at the end of the road was attracting attention: lights were going on in the surrounding houses. They parked the cars at a caravan parking lot, glamming them into ordinary human civilian vehicles. Ten of the dálki officers would be continuing on gadflies, and floating the cage on five rescue pallets. The pallets were an expense the brass had had the nerve to balk at until Sorael had reminded them that all apocalypses aside, based on the death tolls around the country getting Fenrir secured again was going to save a lot more than five lives. Two of the dálki officers--Uliel and Wyczynsky--were returning to Bodø with the truck. Melantha and Jessalyn didn't say where they were going, or how.

Jessalyn had prepared extra wards, and instructed Brynjar in their mounting and triggering if they were needed. Between the construction at City Nord and the repairs at Granfästning, he had enough of a grasp of the woodwork itself to be able to do elementary repairs, and she transferred half of her milled blanks to him. Now, at the end of the road, she thanked him and Finn for all they’d done, and warmly hugged them both. 

Finn, humbled and a little ashamed at the way the dálki had hailed him when he’d joined the travelling party in the pasture, had meekly ridden in the back seat of the truck, between Melantha and Jessalyn. He had asked how Melantha’s reading was going, and after a bit of careful probing to make sure that he really wanted to know, she told him. They talked about it. Something that he said--he wasn’t sure what--made her very excited, and she scribbled it down in the margins, with a lot of exclamation points.

And now it was time to say goodbye to her. Finn berated himself for the hours he could have spent with her, and didn’t, although it was some consolation to remind himself that probably if they’d spent more time together, she would have gotten to know him better, and gotten thoroughly sick of him. 

"Melantha," he faltered, looking up into her face.

"Yes?"

"If...not to be all dramatic, but if something happens, if we don’t come back from this, I want you to know that...that I..."

She smiled. "Yes?"

"I admire you immensely, I’ve enjoyed working with you very much, and I feel like my life has been richer for knowing you."

There was a fleeting expression on her face, a twist of the mouth, a lift of one eyebrow, as if he had said way too much. Then it was gone and she was beaming and she said, "Likewise." Before he could apologize, she hugged him to her, and kissed his forehead. "Go well, Finn Weber."

"You too," he agreed as she stepped away. He watched her retreating back, impatiently scrubbing at his eyes. As he turned away, and climbed on the back of a gadfly to ride with Fenrir and Brynjar and the remaining dálki officers to the tunnel entrance, he drank in as much of the clear, cold Swedish night as possible. He did not expect to see it again.

***

Even after waking late, Vegard had spent the day in an agony of impatience. Eventually Bård had gotten tired of him pacing the room and talking about the new airport in Bodø, and suggested that he take himself shopping.

It had been good advice. Finn still had Vegard’s wallet, but Vegard had hung onto the great wad of cash he’d withdrawn in Mandal, and he still hadn't spent much of it. He supposed that there was a chance it might come in handy before he saw Finn again, but things were amazingly cheap here, the new hoodie he was wearing was proof that stuff was well made, and playing tourist was a concrete way to support the people of Varggrav. In a pinch Bård still had all of his cards, and Vegard could pay him back when his own were returned to him. 

He replaced Helene’s anniversary gift with an opal pendant in an exquisitely worked silver setting. He found handmade wooden toys for the kids, including two different kinds of spinning tops. He bought the most enchanting battered tin bucket from a shopkeeper who had been using it to hold homemade toilet brushes and seemed a little incredulous that anyone would want the bucket itself. He tried a sampling of svartalfar candy, and fell in love with hardeblomster, seeds and honey and edible flowers pressed into flower-shaped cakes. At a bookstore, he found one book on elementary magic and another very technical-looking one on the use of sound in magic. They probably would have been good to have days ago, so that he could have read them by now and had an extra layer of preparedness for tonight, but if everything went all right, he would be able to read them at his leisure. Maybe even in the comfort of his own bed. 

Now, that was something, wasn’t it? How was he going to take up his old life, when his understanding of the world had fundamentally changed? Were there rules for this sort of thing? Did he have to keep it a secret? Could he whistle up nightlights for his kids? Who would he even ask? Of course, if he could just go home, hold Helene in his arms again and hug the kids and play with them and sit down to a meal and putter around the house fixing things, he would gladly give up magic and never speak of it again. In a way, that would be easiest of all, because it would mean nothing had to change. Somehow, though, he didn’t think it would be that easy. 

He was on his way back for tea when the text came from Tora. It was addressed to him, Bård, and Per. She had the threshold spells ready. 

Per was already at the elevators on level seventeen when Vegard got there, and Bård appeared ten minutes later. They went over together. "Fareshta’s off work by now and Astrid switched shifts with a friend, but Stian and Malin are right out," Per reported as they walked. "Malin’s scholarship is one of the new ones, so it has this weird role model clause that pulls it at the barest hint of impropriety, and one of Stian’s sisters in Nedrekorgen just got beat up by the Peace Division and she’s blind now, maybe for good, so his parents are freaking out at him. But he’s letting us use his gadfly, so we’ve still got five. Everyone else is kind of skittish, but I mean, if we do this and the dálki turn on us, it’s just Innilokun Ríki, right? And if we don’t do it, people out there keep dying."

Vegard found himself wishing that he’d stopped at the boarding house to drop off his purchases. It seemed kind of weird, to be carrying a tin bucket full of sweets and books and jewellery around. "So we pick up the overlay, and Bård and I and Astrid and Vigdis take it and go straight to the chamber you picked out and wait. Right? Just wait."

"Right," Per said. "Fareshta and Mohammed and Marius and I will meet Fenrir and the dálki and the changelings at the entrance and conduct them to you. And we hope that there are no complications, but if there are, there are people, and there are gadflies."

"Will our phones work in the tunnels?" Vegard asked.

"Not once you get away from the city," Per said. "The gadflies have radios, though."

"And we’ve got Brynjar," Bård reminded them. "He doesn't need a network, and he can see if we’re in trouble, or call us for help if he is." 

"And if we both get into trouble?" Vegard pressed. 

"If you have to relocate to somewhere safe," Per said, "do it. We’ll find you."

Tora was waiting for them; she flung open the curtain just as Per’s finger was poised over the bell. She was wearing yesterday’s clothes, and the circles under her eyes were yellow at the edges. "Done," she said, passing him two sheets of what looked like acetate. "The one with the paw in the corner goes on Fenrir, for the DNA. The one that’s just a circle is for the threshold. My advice is to put Fenrir’s half on first. Then make sure he’s on the right side of whatever threshold you choose, and fire it up." Her voice cracked with exhaustion.

Per handed the sheets to Bård, who tucked them into his hoodie, which if it was identical to Vegard’s, had a very large inside pocket on one side. "What do we owe you?" Vegard asked.

She named a figure. He was shocked by how low it was. 

Per pulled out his cell phone, and texted something. The reply was almost instant. Then he sketched a glyph in the air, and a furrow appeared between his brows. A bank draft appeared in the air in front of him, rolled up, and fell to the ground. He swept it up, and presented it to Bård and Vegard. "Sign?"

They had to borrow a pen from Tora. When it was Vegard’s turn to sign--as one of Gisela Freidag’s designated representatives--he saw with some satisfaction that the figure was half again what Tora had asked for. Then Per signed as a witness. 

Tora had prewritten a receipt, and would have only had to sign, but when she saw the amount, she had to start a new one. " _Not_ that I’m complaining," she said with a broad grin. "You realize you guys just set me up for life, right?"

Per raised his hands in a backing off gesture. "The Samkoma set you up for life. For about, I might add, half what they spend every year on the Yule party."

"Are you still wanting that hug?" she asked Vegard, handing Bård the receipt. 

"Yeah!" He put his arms around her and squeezed. "You’re brilliant. Thank you for saving the world." 

"I’ve told you my position on that," she sighed, disengaging. "Anyway, good luck with it."

***

They made the meeting place the boarding house, so that while everyone was assembling Vegard could drop off his stuff. As soon as they entered the common room, Bård’s phone came to life. "Summon the Varggrav dálki now," Brynjar’s voice said softly. "Two of you going to the room and catching who you find there. The third, knocking on the office door."

Bård and Per were on the stairs before Vegard could put down his bucket. He went to the office door, and knocked. "Sir?"

There were growls, and a shout, and a dog’s scream, and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. Vegard turned the knob and found it locked. He broke the door with a blow from his heel, then rammed his shoulder against it until it gave way. 

He found the hostelier standing over a burly svartalfr man, brandishing a lamp with a heavy base. The stranger’s head was bleeding, and he was moving feebly. One of the dogs was fastened to his wrist, snarling. The other one lay by his feet, dead, a knife in its side. The hostelier turned in his direction, drawing back with the lamp. 

"It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s Vegard," Vegard said in a rush. "Vegard the human. Are you okay?"

The hostelier lowered the lamp, and groped for the chair behind his desk, and sat. "He killed North."

"I’m sorry."

"He had the knife to my throat. When you knocked, the dogs went for him. But North..."

Vegard put a hand on his shoulder. "Can you call the dálki? I’ll make sure he doesn’t go anywhere."

The hostelier nodded, and drew a glyph in the centre of his desk while Vegard kept an eye on the stranger. "There’s another person with him. A girl. They wanted to know where you were staying. I’m sorry. They had a knife. I told them...I knew you were out, so I told them. I’m sorry."

"Don’t be," Vegard said. "Our stuff isn’t as important as your life!"

A crowd had gathered in the doorway. One of the lute-players from the other day, and the nissen with the punk haircut, moved into the room. "Do you have duct tape?" Vegard asked the hostelier.

"In the desk."

Vegard pulled out the tape, tore off a length, and handed the rest to the girl with the punk haircut, who used it to secure the assailant’s wrists, as Vegard got his ankles. Then they turned him onto his side so that he wouldn’t choke if the blow to the head made him vomit. 

The surviving dog had finally unlatched when the girl had approached with the tape. Now it backed off, stiff-legged, from the intruder. Tail hanging, it sniffed the body of the dog the hostelier had called North, and flopped to its belly, head on paws, eyes mournful. 

From the doorway, Bård said, "Come on, Vegard. Brynjar says we have to go before the dálki show up."

"I--" It didn’t seem fair, to have been the cause of this mess, but to not stay around to help clean it up. He got the impression that the people here had been cleaning up other people’s messes for far too long. 

"We’ve got to stop Fenrir," Bård insisted, and Vegard realized this was as much to explain to the others why they were running off as to remind him that he had a good reason to do so.

The crowd in the doorway drew back. "What are you waiting for?" the lute-player demanded. "Go!"

"I’m so sorry," Vegard told the room before turning and following his brother. The bucket was on a side table, and he didn’t care. 

It seemed that all of the guests, and a good few people from the neighbourhood, were crowded around the door. Some of them were holding a svartalfr girl about Emma’s age, who struggled and spat at Per. "That’s who was in our room," Bård explained. 

As Vegard edged past her, her foot lashed out and she dealt him a sharp kick in the shin. "Ow! What was that for?"

"That’s for being evil." 

She was pulled back by her captors before he could answer her. He shouted after them, "Please, nobody hurt her. She’s just a little girl."

Out on the street, they drew stares. "Slows down," Brynjar's voice said. "There, good."

"She broke the lyngepause," Bård lamented. 

"She was only a little girl," Vegard said. "She could have been Emma." Something awful occurred to him. "Do you think that was her dad? In the office?"

"I don’t know," Bård said quietly.

Brynjar’s voice floated out of Bård’s phone. "It are. He has a concussion, but he will recovers. He are an old schoolmate of a man whose mother was a servant of the family of the head of the Peace Division. The schoolmate got the call for help; he passed it to his friend who need money."

"Okay, fine," Vegard said, "but what kind of man would bring his little daughter along?"

"A man who needed an extra pair of hands and would do anything to keep her out of the mines," Per answered grimly. 

"Fair enough."

"You mayest as well going to dinner," Brynjar said. "We are some hours out."

"Thanks for warning us," Bård said. "Are you okay over there?"

"One of Vinael’s merry band launched a spell at us," Brynjar said gaily. "Very sophistiphicated targeting of the wards on Fenrir. It were deflected by kobolds."

"Kobolds," Per echoed in wonder. "I thought they all died in the war."

Brynjar rang off. They found a restaurant that Per assured them served traditional Varggrav cuisine, and texted the others to say where they were. 

When Vigdis, Astrid, Fareshta, Mohammed, and Marius arrived, the eight of them shared communal dishes of goat, rock ptarmigan, mixed greens, mushroom stew, and three kinds of cheese, with great round loaves of bread and cold spiced tea. "I really hope we all come back from this okay," Per said, "but if something happens...I just want you to know, all of you, that you have been most excellent comrades. And I can’t speak for all of you, but if this is my last night on Earth, I can’t think of ways I would rather have spent it, or people I would rather have spent it with." 

Teacups were raised at this, and there was a great cry of "Skål!"

Vegard turned to Per a little guiltily. "There’s no one else in Varggrav," he said, "but...if I could pick anyone, I would really rather spend my last night with my family."

"Ditto," Bård agreed. "I mean, _my_ family."

"I would have picked my mom," Per admitted, a small, sad smile on his face. "But Ylvis is a pretty awesome consolation prize."

***

Eventually, the call came from Brynjar: they were about to go underground, at the same place that he’d driven the car in. This helped no one, of course, because for everyone else things had gone by way too quickly, but the tunnels had only a few entry points, and Per seemed confident that he and his party knew them all.

They took the elevators down to the very bottom of the pit. Vegard seemed fascinated by the mining equipment, the heaps of rock, the harsh LED lights. Bård was just unsettled. The lowest floor had a jury-rigged look to it, all slapped together with raw edges, and although he knew that all the levels of Varggrav were like this underneath and it would eventually come to resemble them, right now it gave him the feeling that it could all come crashing down on them at any moment. Worse, in this joyless place, it was easy to remember that for all its ingenuity and coziness and quirky cosmopolitanism, Varggrav had been built on the misery of the svartalfar. Bård wondered how many of the people here had never left the tunnels, ever. He craned his neck--god, even when he was being morbid it felt good to be able to do that--up at the city above him. From this angle it was a glowing orange ring, humming with life. He imagined working down here, leaving that city behind every day and going to a job that might kill him. He imagined that glowing orange ring being his home and his leisure and the source of everything good in the world, and the unfairness of it made him sick at heart. 

"Are we being followed?" Vigdis asked, concern showing on her face.

"No. That is, I don’t think so. I just...have you ever left the tunnels?"

"Once," she said. "When I was a little girl. Come on. We’re parked up here."

The gadflies were sitting warded in a vast room called the dry, which appeared to be a large and grimy locker room that smelled like dirt and sweat and wet wool. Now, between shifts, there were no people here; only hooks holding trousers and sweaters for those on shift, coveralls and pairs of battered boots for those who were off. Per explained that miners kept dry clothes in here, so that they didn’t have to walk home wet and smelly. Mohammed had spent the afternoon moving everyone’s gadflies into this place. The vehicles had to be walked in the city proper, and he’d anticipated the possibility of needing to make a quick getaway, so here they were. Bård and Vigdis shared a gadfly, as did Astrid and Vegard, Per and Mohammed, Marius and Fareshta. 

The gadflies looked a little like pogo sticks with ninety-degree bends in them, a headlight on the vertical part, and a saddle on the horizontal part. When started up, with an ignition system that somehow involved magic, they lifted off the ground, swaying gently under the weight of the passengers, and made a sound only a little deeper than the whine of a mosquito. They appeared to handle fairly intuitively...and boy, could they go!

It took about ten minutes to traverse the wide tunnel that he and Vegard had used to come here. On the other end of it, Vigdis told him, was a silver mine, one of the larger ones operating here. The first time they'd been through, he and Vegard had been lucky enough to have come in just after a shift change. Now, as with the dry, the tunnel was empty. Short of the mine, though, they turned off into a narrower tunnel. 

Here they moved a little more slowly. Bård thought it was due to the size of the tunnel until Per, who was in the lead, put out an arm. They all stopped, and killed the engines. "I hear something," he whispered. "Switch to silent."

Vigdis did something with the handlebars, and when the engine started up, the gadfly seemed sluggish and didn’t have quite as much lift, but it was very quiet. They crept along, much more slowly than they had, until the tunnel widened out into the great hub where Sleipnir had dropped off the brothers. Now they could all hear the noises, but in the tunnels, it was impossible to tell where they were coming from. 

In the middle of the chamber, with all of the lights off and the engines powered down, Per said, "All right, for the moment we stick with the plan." His phone buzzed, and he put it to his ear. "It’s your buddy. Fenrir’s under attack. Okay, go!"

"To the chamber?" Vegard asked.

"Yeah," Per said. "Keep the overlay safe."

Bård touched the acetate sheets that he’d hidden under his colourful hoodie. Four gadflies whispered to life again, four witchlights kindled in the darkness, and they shot off in two different directions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Jon Anderson's "Solid Space" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8c-FcnUcDQ


	21. The Fraternity of the Wolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ambush / Webs / The cavalry / Counterintuitive survival strategy #9: upcycled clothing / Backseat driver / Reunion

One officer was dead. Another one was hit but frozen, and Sleipnir was speeding her towards Varggrav. Stasis tech to treat elfshot was really new, but if they were quick enough, and if they knew what to do with her when she got there, she might only lose the arm. 

The other dálki were locked in a firefight with two snipers. They been waiting in ambush in this chamber, but Brynjar had seen them soon enough for his warning to put on leather armour to have saved most of them. One gunman--Brynjar saw that he was middle-aged, worked too hard, hadn’t seen his twins in fifteen years--was halfway up a stalagmite. The other, a young mover and shaker whose mother had taught him to make omelettes to impress the girls, but whose sense of aggrieved entitlement made perfect eggs not quite worth it, had been taking shots at them from a shelf of rock. 

Brynjar and Finn huddled underneath the cage, creeping forward with it on its cushion of air and magic. They had no weapons; the only thing they could do was make sure that they got Fenrir where he was supposed to go. The wolf was bristling with elfshot at this point, but it wouldn’t do much more than annoy him. Brynjar just hoped that Finn didn’t see and try to pull it out, because elfshot would be at best incapacitating, and at worst, in Finn’s weakened condition, possibly deadly. 

The grey eye saw the civilian gadflies zipping towards them. Brynjar leaned close to Finn’s ear. "The cavalry are coming," he whispered. 

"What do we do?" Finn whispered back.

"Keep Fenrir moving forward."

One of those weapons was _not_ the tiny crossbow used for elfshot. A blade thudded into the top of the cage, and Brynjar felt one of the wards let go. He fished a twist of silver wire out of the pocket of his duster, duct-taped it to the bottom of the cage in between rescue pallets, and infused it with magic. 

"Okay?" Finn asked.

Brynjar made the gadfly radio speakers sound a quiet warning explaining where each of the snipers was. "Okay for now."

***

"This is the way?" Vegard whispered in Astrid’s ear.

"This is the way." She drifted to a stop, though, and motioned Vigdis to do the same. "You feel that? Something’s off."

Vegard couldn’t feel anything, but in a moment of inspiration, he whistled the first six notes of "I Can See Clearly Now."

Astrid turned around and cuffed the side of his head. "What are you _doing_? Whistling carries!"

"Spells," Vegard explained, pushing back his hood and peering into a darkness that was no longer complete. "I can’t _feel_ the magic at all, but I can see...it’s like a series of delicate little webs, all along the tunnel."

"I bet they’re for detection," Bård said, looking all around him. "They must have gotten here earlier, and didn’t know where to look for us, so they covered every tunnel entrance off the hub."

Astrid said a word in a language Vegard didn’t recognize, but he could infer its meaning from the context. "Did we go through?"

Both brothers examined the shreds of magic clinging to their skin and clothes. "Yeah," they said in unison. And the sounds that had echoed through the tunnels were now definitely ahead of them, and definitely getting closer.

"Go go go!" Vigdis whispered, and gunned the gadfly engine, turning it back to full volume and full power. Both vehicles flared to life, wheeled around, and shot back out to the hub.

***

"What’s going on?" Finn whispered, resisting the temptation to look out.

"Another officer are down," Brynjar reported, both eyes wide. "That kind one who buyed me a milkshake. Oh, Finn, he were an only child. He voted for the man who just murdered him."

Finn, still propelling the pallets along with one hand, squeezed Brynjar’s shoulder with the other. 

Brynjar’s voice dropped. "A soft sound behind the killer. He turns, fires. The approacher slumps. The killer bends down to see her face, to watching the elfshot ravage a criminal’s system, for this is what he thinks to be justice. She grabs him, breathes confusion into him. Djinn!"

"Seriously?" 

"I am all of the seriousness. Our saviours are arrivalled."

Amid the commotion, a face appeared level with their own, peering in at them. Finn stifled a cry; Brynjar patted his arm to quiet him, and Finn saw that the newcomer was a young svartalfr man, his long black curls braided to keep them out of his face. He bent at the waist as he walked alongside them. "Per Kristtorn," Brynjar said, moving his hand from Finn’s arm and extending it to the young man to shake, "we has spoken."

"Brynjar Kvam," Per said, shaking the hand. 

"Duck now," Brynjar said.

Per ducked, and something thunked into the wood of the cage.

"Is Fenrir all right?" Finn asked.

Per straightened, and gave him a thumbs up. "Gonna get away," he muttered. "Don’t want to draw attention to you. Keep Fenrir going."

"Ylvis were detected," Brynjar hissed suddenly. "Coming back. Chased. Duck!"

Per ducked. "Not here! Tell them hide. Send the gadflies, but protect the overlay." He straightened up, and ran away. 

As Brynjar relayed the message, Finn picked up his pace a little, thinking that if the Bright Court didn’t kill him, his back would.

***

At Brynjar’s instructions, Astrid and Vigdis dropped Vegard and Bård in the hub where all the tunnels met, the same place where Finn and Brynjar had dropped them four days ago, before speeding off to join the battle between the Bodø dálki, Per’s friends, and whatever private army Vinael had managed to amass. The brothers picked a small tunnel to hide in at random, their lenses letting them avoid the ones that had detection spells right out front. They were just in time to watch another gadfly emerge from the tunnel they’d just come out of and follow Astrid and Vigdis. They crept deeper into their new tunnel, which wasn’t tall enough to stand in, and sat.

"Now?" Bård said. Far off, there were mighty echoes, the sound of a fight, but here was absolutely still and silent, and pitch dark.

"I guess we wait." Vegard checked his phone, bathing the tunnel in a momentary white glow that, when he turned it off, made the darkness seem that much darker. "Midnight."

"Midnight at the end of the world," Bård murmured.

"You know what I do remember about those months in 2007?" Vegard mused. "Over and over, when I actually put my mind to it? Lying there, or sitting there, or standing there, thinking, okay, this is it. I don't remember how we got out--"

"None of this is making me feel better," Bård said acidly.

"But we _did_ get out. That's the thing. And most of the time we survived because people were decent to us. Even when we didn’t expect them to be, even when they had no reason to be, even when they were creatures from our nightmares, they were decent. So I’m not giving up now. Not just because they’re out there fighting for us, but because they don’t deserve to be given up on."

"Yeah," Bård said, and from the timbre and position of his voice he’d straightened up again. "Hey." He hummed a bit of Collective Soul, and light streamed from his cupped hands, illuminating a brilliant smile.

"Good show!" cried Vegard, beaming. "You’ve been practicing."

"Yeah. And I borrowed your lock for a little while last night."

"That’s fine. I never noticed." Vegard leaned forward, peering at the little light in Bård’s hands. "Yours is a lot more stable than mine was to begin with."

"Well. My unlocking skills are still shaky. But there’s also, I don’t know if you can do this..." Bård closed his eyes and set his mouth. The light faltered, and Vegard was the one who steadied it, so that Bård could concentrate on this other thing. Bård sang one long, sustained note, and the smallest rocks on the cave floor collected in a small pile. 

He let the note go and leaned back against the tunnel wall with a sigh. "There," he said.

"Way cool," Vegard breathed.

"It’s just little things, though." 

"If anyone ever tells you little things can’t make a big difference, give them bubonic plague. Can I see how you do that?"

"Yeah." 

Vegard waited at their link, and watched Bård do it again, with even smaller rocks. "Oh wow," he said. "It’s totally different from what I do."

"What? How? I got it from you."

"Watch. I’m going to try. I don’t even know if I can do it." Vegard waited until he felt Bård at the link, paying attention. Then he hummed a bit of the chorus of "I Wanna Rock," and flexed. He made one rock climb the pile. It was a bigger rock, and he did it while keeping the light on, but it was just the one.

"Wow. You’re right," Bård said. "Totally different technique. It’s like you taught me to paint, but you’re a Rembrandt and I’m a Turner."

"Rembrandt," Vegard said, pleased. 

Then there was a sound in the tunnel, and they froze.

The sounds came again, a scuffle from back the way they’d come. There was light in the hub. 

Soundlessly, they crept back to the mouth of the tunnel, and found four lios alfar in the hub. Three stood in the centre of the chamber, with witchlights; the fourth was in darkness, stealthily checking the mouths of tunnels. 

"Come on, Ylvis brothers," one of the centre ones said cajolingly. "We saw you take the wolf. We know you’re here. We brought a treat. Something we know Vegard likes."

: _An airplane?_ : Vegard thought wryly at Bård.

: _If they knew you_ that _well, none of this would ever have happened and we’d all be at our respective homes right now._ :

: _Finn and Brynjar must have come through here while we were goofing off._ :

The elf creeping around to all the tunnels paused by one, motioning for his compatriots. He drew a weapon.

Vegard picked up a fist-sized rock and threw it at a tunnel entrance further away. The elves spun, and Vegard ducked back into the shadows. 

Now the creeping elf was staying put, and the others were coming to investigate. When they were all near the other tunnel, the brothers burst from the small tunnel, running in opposite directions. 

It was unbelievably rash, Vegard realized as he hit a random tunnel and felt the tiny impact of elfshot bolts on his back. That was it. Game over. He had, he figured, about ninety seconds to live, all of it spent in the worst agony he could imagine. 

He waited for the agony. None was forthcoming. 

Vegard turned, carefully. On the ground behind him were the bolts, hair-fine, as long as the nail on his pinkie finger was wide. 

He was tempted to put his hand back and feel, but if any had stuck back there, they would embed themselves in his exposed skin. He would just have to keep going, and remember not to lean on anything, just in case. There was no way of getting back to the hub, either, at least not this way, not without risking death from one of those loose bolts. He moved deeper into the tunnel. 

: _Vegard?_ : Bård’s query was flavoured with despair.

: _I’m okay. What about you?_ :

: _I saw you get hit._ :

: _The hoodie you gave me saved my life. It’s so densely woven, it acts like the leather armour. They just fell on the ground. Did anyone get you at all?_ :

: _No,_ : Bård thought at him. : _I’m pretty sure if I got hit you’d feel it. And vice versa, I suppose._ : 

: _If they didn’t even try to shoot at you, put your hood up. It’ll protect your head. Look, I can’t go back over where the bolts fell. I have to go forward and hope it connects with something else._ : He took a few steps forward, and turned a bend, and saw a web of spellwork. 

Well, that was no good. He turned back, and jumped, as he heard movement in the mouth of the tunnel. 

: _Bård, is that you?_ :

: _No. One of the elves just went in._ :

"Get out now," Vegard yelped. "The floor is--"

A choked scream told him he was too late. It went on for a long time. Vegard waited, hands pressed to his face, until it stopped, and then he counted to twenty, and then he went back to the mouth of the tunnel. 

The elf had had leather armour, but it didn’t protect the ankles. He must have kicked up one of the bolts as he walked through them. Even as Vegard slumped against the side of the tunnel, taking deep breaths to try to quell the wave of nausea that rose in him, he thought, knowing what he knew now, that elfshot must be DNA-keyed. Elfshot would kill a human, but the elf in front of him had been...liquefied. He was still steaming.

From the feel of Bård’s thoughts, he was just as shaken as Vegard. : _We’re both on the same page as far as you not being responsible for this, right?_ :

"Vegard?" his phone whispered, in Brynjar’s voice.

Vegard pulled the phone out, and whispered, "Yeah?"

"Go to the mouth of the tunnel and wait. It are safe."

"How?"

"Thou art right about the DNA key," Brynjar said. "Elfshot are keyed to deactivate following contact with, not to point it too finely, chemicals created in the reaction you just witnessed."

Vegard obediently stepped onto the leather armour. The smell wasn’t bad--something like ozone and something like hot unflavoured gelatin--but knowing what it came from turned his stomach. There were two elves at the centre of the hub now, while the creeping elf still waited by the tunnel he’d staked out, looking more traumatized than vigilant. The two were focused on the tunnels in this quadrant of the chamber. 

"When I tells you to run, you run," Brynjar said. "Do not putting your hood up. You will be safe."

A rock came flying out of one of the tunnels, drawing the attention of the elves when it landed halfway up the chamber wall and tumbled down. Vegard tensed, but he made himself wait until Brynjar said, "Now!"

Vegard ran, and reached the tunnel the rock had come out of. Bård was there, waiting just inside with a look of supreme relief, and he reached out...

"No!" Brynjar hissed. "No hugs. Walking. Now."

The brothers exchanged a look, but they walked until they came to the first detection web. "Now what?" Bård asked.

"Magick the elfshot out of your brother’s hoodie, onto the ground behind you."

Under his breath, Bård hummed a few bars of Def Leppard's "Let it Go." Vegard felt only the gentlest tugging at the fabric of the hoodie. "Why _that_ 'Let it Go'?" he wondered aloud.

Bård made a face. "How is being one with the wind and sky going to help? Brynjar, what now?"

"Cross the spell."

The web of light vanished as soon as they touched it, and triumphant shouts echoed from the hub. 

"It are safe to hug now," Brynjar said through both cell phones, "but safer still to run."

The brothers clasped each other’s forearms briefly, and by the light of the detection spells still ahead of them, they ran.

***

"That's not resting," Finn growled.

Brynjar cracked his eyelids open. "I are lying perfectly still and silent, with mine eyes closed." 

"And your eyes are tracking back and forth wildly behind your eyelids, and your lips are moving, and every so often, you twitch."

"I guiding Bård and Vegard through the tunnels. They are on their way to us, but pursuited. Must you pace?"

Finn stopped, and settled against the wall. Brynjar understood the frustration: they'd been so close to the brothers, so close to being able to scoop them up and retrieve Fenrir from where they'd hidden him and get this thing over with, but those elves had been lying in wait, and quite willing to kill. "You were fixing that bloody cage all the time that I slept. And now you’re supposed to be sleeping, and you’re _still_ working."

"You has forfeited the ability to order anyone to take care of themselves," Brynjar retorted, and closed his eyes again, but this time he only gave the brothers detailed instructions on how to find them, and trusted them to sort out the rest for themselves while he got some sleep.

***

Vegard stopped short in the tunnel. "You’re right," he said. "I don't know where we went wrong, but we must be turned around. There's something about the quality of the sound...this is a dead end." That wasn't precisely the worry that Bård had expressed, but now that Vegard had put his finger on it, it seemed exactly right. They’d been on high alert about too many things for either of them to have noticed before,

"Okay. Okay," Bård said. They stopped, and fell silent. Vegard let his light die down. 

There was faint light ahead, and Vegard’s voice was, distantly, singing. 

Vegard rekindled the light. They both quickened their pace, and then slowed again, because a fall right now could be deadly. "Finn?" Vegard called.

The singing cut off. "Oh my gods, we're here, right here!" Finn cried, and they rounded a bend and saw him start up an incline towards them.

Brynjar popped up like a jack-in-the-box. It would have been funny, if not for the terror on his face. He yanked Finn back, pulling him, bewildered and struggling, to the far side of the dead end. "Okay," he said to the brothers with eerie calm, "you comes here, careful careful."

Vegard and Bård shuffled, arms held out from their bodies like little kids in snowsuits, into the dead end. It was a little wider here. 

"Still, now."

Finn made a move to break free. "No," Bård said, shaking his head as vigorously as he could without disturbing the hood, "he's right. Don't even try to touch us."

At the widest part, the four edged past each other. Brynjar and Finn were pressed up against the tunnel wall; Bård and Vegard kept about an inch between their backs and the wall, and four inches between them at the changelings. And nobody died. 

When the brothers were at the dead end, they sagged with relief, and Brynjar let out a shaky breath. Finn said, "Would someone like to tell me what the hell is going on?"

"Elfshot," Vegard told him. 

"Just losing the hoodies," Brynjar said. "Forsooth, they are more threat than protectionation now."

Both brothers drew their hands into their hoodies, used the sleeves to pull down the zippers, and then--carefully, achingly slowly--eased out of them, careful to let no part of the outsides touch their skin or the clothes they had on underneath. Just before letting his drop, Bård remembered the overlays, and pulled them out of his pocket, tucking them under his shirt. Then both men left the hoodies in a heap on the ground. 

"Backs of the knees," Brynjar said, and Bård sang his little bit of "Let it Go" again, voice wavering. "Okay," Brynjar said. Both men took a few stumbling steps forward, away from the things and into the changelings' arms. 

"They got us at that crossroads," Bård explained, his voice muffled by Brynjar's shoulder. He hadn't realized how terrified he'd been until now, when it was over. "Two of them. They were going one way, and we were going the other, and we ran clear through with them shooting at us, and had to lose them before we could find our way back. And all that time, we were like, I am bristling with fiery death right now."

They disengaged from the hugs. "We got Fenrir away when the the Varggrav dálki showed up," Finn explained as they started to walk up the slope. "We put him in a safe place and went to find you to take us to his new chamber, but Vinael's people saw us, and we just ran."

"He haven't even got that many," Brynjar said. "He beganned with ten, and between arrests and unfortunate accidents he are down to six includinging himself. But they are all trained tacticians with ample resources, and they have been preparifying this space."

"And they're utterly unscrupulous," Bård added bitterly.

"No," Brynjar said. "They are men of scruples. They priding themselves on it. But they are fighting pure evil and will not have their best qualities taken advantage of."

"Six of them and four of us," Vegard mused. "Not impossible odds. Especially when you count Per's friends." He looked up, dread on his face. "Brynjar, are they--?"

"Vigdis have broken an arm, and the Varggrav dálki, having been briefed, studiously ignore that she are wanted by them as they conducted her back to the city."

"And the dálki?" Bård said. 

Finn sniffed. "We've lost some..." His voice cracked, and he gestured helplessly. "...escorts, I guess. Maybe friends. I don't know. They're dead. Three total." 

"I'm sorry," Bård said, half a beat ahead of Vegard.

"They are kept busy," Brynjar said. "They buy us time. It falleth to us to return to Fenrir, to bring him to this space you have picked out."

"Neither of us have seen it," Bård said, "but we know what passage it's in."

"I sees," Brynjar said, brow furrowing. "I sees." 

"However we decide to do this," Vegard said, "we should map it out now, so if we get separated we're all still on the same page."

They were well out of the dead end now, the danger of stray elfshot evidently past, and Brynjar knelt to sketch a route in the dirt. "If we takes _this_ route, now, while we are still lostified to our pursuers, it will take us to Fenrir past his new home, by a circuitish route that will not be easily divined, so if we must hurry or scatter on the way back there is no confusedness. Hath anyone a pen?"

Finn had one. Under a witchlight as dim as they could make it, each used it to inscribe Brynjar's map on the inside of his wrist, stylizing it to make it look like the mark of some sort of brotherhood. While they were drawing, Brynjar got to his feet, visibly favouring one leg.

Vegard clapped a hand on his little brother's shoulder. "Bård, you have the overlays. You stay in the middle of us as much as you can. Guys, first and foremost we protect Bård."

Finn nodded, despite Bård's grimace of distaste. "Just remember, Vegard, you're not elfshot-proof anymore."

"Nobody is," Bård said. "We look after each other."

They started to walk. They took one junction, which brought them into a high narrow tunnel that rose; and then another junction, that spilled them down into a wide tunnel full of webs of light. And then Brynjar said, softly, "Run," and they ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Mahavishnu Orchestra's "Noonward Race" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSv6SEN3SKo


	22. Endgame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The weapon / It will not do / Apprehension / Counterintuitive survival strategy #10: sharing the love / Invisible son / Vegard skal reddes / A delicate flower / Martyrdom / Oops / Threshold (reprise)

Vegard had recognized this tunnel almost immediately as the one that housed Fenrir's new chamber. It was very distinctive: smooth-sided, and the ceiling was higher on one side than the other, giving it the shape of a slightly flattened egg. A lot of chambers and side tunnels led off it, some with actual doors, and now that he was looking, he saw sconces for torches. Even if they hadn't already tried to start down this one once and been prevented, it was large and developed enough that it made sense for it to be staked out. 

He saw the shape leap out of one of the shadowed doorways, and slammed it against the cave wall before it could get to Bård, grabbing at its upper arms. The elf crushed against him...was she _chuckling_? Vegard felt something prickly at his wrist, felt the elf wrench under him to change her grip, and prepared himself for some very unpleasant final moments, steadfast in the knowledge that he was protecting Bård. 

The prickles gave way to something cool and smooth. Bliss rocketed up his arm, and he realized, as he heard his own shout echoed by his brother, that he had been mercifully, marvellously, gorgeously wrong. Vegard sank to his knees, hugging himself with his free arm. "Go," he told Bård and the changelings in a strangled voice. "Do it!"

Bård’s knees had buckled, and he was propping himself against the side of the tunnel, his breath coming in little yips. "I...can’t..."

Vegard’s hands groped for the Circlet of Sælu, and were captured behind him. "Bloody hell," his assailant said, as another shape emerged from the shadows to help her hold him. "It’s all true about him. Did you see? He practically took my shoulder out of its socket trying to get at it, but now he's trying to get away from it."

He couldn’t take it off. He couldn’t even go with his backup plan, and jam one of the points under the nail of his pinkie finger. But he could feel the waveform in his mind, making everything resonate with bliss. " _I will keep myself, I will find a way_ ," he sang raggedly. His flex was more of a quiver at first, but he made the wave form stutter, and that gave him the control to cancel it right out. Bård reeled to his feet, and ran.

Vegard’s wrists were tied securely, and his captors duct-taped his mouth shut, and then the stone and the bliss were gone. He tried not to be disappointed: it would have made captivity much more bearable, but he wasn’t sure he could shield something of that magnitude from his brother. He heard two bodies run away from him. The third hauled him up and dragged him down a side corridor to an iron door. When this was opened, the elf threw him into a room roughly hewn from the rock. The door slammed and locked, and a wavering sheet of violet light settled over the metal and then dispersed.

Humming up a light worked. Humming open the lock did not; it had an extra layer of magic on it, and could not be opened from the inside. Humming open his bonds seemed to pull at them a little, to no effect whatsoever. At least this was better than elfshot. Vegard got himself into as comfortable a position as possible, and settled down to wait.

***

Both Vegard and Brynjar had urged him to run, and Finn had obeyed without hesitation. Thus he was the first to reach what the map on his wrist had marked as Fenrir's new chamber, and he had enough of a lead that he had to stop somewhere to let Bård and Brynjar catch up anyway.

He opened the door, the door where Bård would be putting the overlay, and his heart sank. Brynjar had assured him that the chamber was larger than Fenrir's old prison, but this space wasn't even as large as Iøynefallende. It looked dark and bare and miserable. He supposed they'd done their best and there was no helping it, but still...

One of the other two had caught up to him. "Look," he said as he turned, "this isn't--" But as a fist slammed into his stomach, he saw that it wasn't Bård or Brynjar after all.

***

Bård was running, with Finn ahead of him and Brynjar behind. The temptation was strong to overtake Finn, but he reminded himself, this wasn’t about competition, and it wasn’t about gallantly facing the danger for himself; it was about getting Fenrir to a secure chamber and using the overlays. As icky as it felt, it made sense for him to be the protected one.

Ahead of him, there was a cry, quickly stifled. Bård slowed to a stop, covered his light with his hand, and stepped into an alcove.

A male voice ahead said, triumphantly, "That’s it, boys. We just got Vegard."

The reply was tinny, but audible. "Vegard’s already in a cell." 

"Have a look, Thiradiel."

"How did he crack a dungeoner?" the tinny voice demanded. "How did he get all the way over there?"

"Dear gods, they’re right about him. He can do anything." Bård grinned into the darkness, but the grin died when the voice continued, "I’d be doing everyone a favour if I just killed him right here." 

"Just get him back into the dungeoner," the tinny voice said. "I think Vinael wants the satisfaction of taking him down himself."

There was a long silence in the tunnel. Well, not exactly a silence, but the sound of bodies shifting. A soft grunt, as if something were being lifted. "I’m starting to wonder about Vinael," the voice said, then. "Do you feel safer? Do you feel like we’re winning? I sure don’t."

"If you wanted to be safe, you should have stayed on your estate. This is about doing what’s right. Come on back to us, Kalindrael."

If Kalindrael came back this way, he would stumble across Bård. Bård weighed the possibilities of trying to find a hiding place versus ambushing him and trying to rescue Finn, but he might be throwing himself into a fight he had no hope of winning, and throwing away their only chance of binding Fenrir. Fortunately, Kalindrael must have been waiting at a junction, because he heard the elf’s voice fade as he muttered, "Well, I’m not so sure ending the world is right, either."

: _Vegard?_ : Bård thought.

: _Are you okay?_ :

: _Yeah. But they got Finn. Can you make yourself invisible or anything?_ :

: _I can try,_ : Vegard replied. : _Why?_ :

: _Because they think he’s you. They think you escaped. I don’t think they know we have doubles, and that might come in handy._ :

: _I’ll try._ :

***

When they’d gotten Vegard, Brynjar had sent Finn running ahead at full speed, and hung back to make sure that Bård either got free or passed him the overlays. The instant Bård had recovered, Brynjar had shoved him ahead of him, and brought up the rear. He could hear pursuers, and saw in their minds that they still had no knowledge of the changelings. If they had to catch someone, it mustn’t be the one with the overlay.

The grey eye saw Finn caught, saw Bård come to a stop ahead. But Brynjar's perfectly ordinary senses told him they were hot on his own heels too. 

He felt his arm jerked, spinning him right around. His left knee gave out, and he landed in a heap, rolling over and over on the dusty stone floor. As he struggled up, something was pressed to his forearm, and suddenly ecstasy was humming all through him. 

He flopped over on his back, beaming winsomely up at three lios alfar. "Oh, so nice," he sighed. "Lovely, sweet, splendid, delightful, delicious, wonderful, exquisite, ecstatic, euphoric. It makes me want to... _share_." In the same way that he sent his thoughts through speakers, he sent his pleasure rebounding through the minds of his captors, and watched them crumple around him, giving Bård ample time to get away.

***

When the cell door opened, Vegard was as ready as he was going to be. When he’d first heard from Bård, he had put out his light, curled up in a corner, and hummed a few bars of the Police’s "Invisible Sun." He couldn’t keep the humming going, obviously, not if he was trying to make people believe this was an empty cell, but once he had the space he was flexing into established, he did his best to keep his mind flexed in that exact way.

He kept focused until he heard the door close. Then he let his mind relax, and rolled over, and hummed up a light. Two new bodies. Not one. 

: _Bård!_ :

Bård’s thoughts came at him from far away. : _You okay?_ : Bård thought at him.

: _Yeah. I guess that’s Brynjar that they threw in next to Finn. Of course. He’s got the duster on. Of course._ :

: _Oh hell. He okay?_ :

Vegard struggled into a sitting position momentarily to check, and then sank back down again. Then he edged a little closer to Finn, because without the hoodie or the exertion of running, he was quite chilly. : _He’s taped up like I am. They both are._ :

: _That’s it,_ : Bård thought. : _I’m coming back._ :

: _What? No! You have to go! You’re our last chance._ :

: _I can’t do this alone, Vegard._ :

: _But you’re our last chance!_ :

: _Exactly. If something happens to me, Fenrir goes free, and maybe the whole world ends, or at least riots itself to pieces. I need help. Besides, they could open that cell any minute and find three instead of two, and then they’re looking for me again and this time I have no one to protect me._ :

: _All right,_ : Vegard thought, with a mixture of reluctance and anticipation. : _Come and get me._ :

***

It took an hour or more for Bård to work his way back down the corridor, darting from alcove to alcove by the faint light of the detection spells they hadn't tripped yet, freezing whenever he heard the slightest noise. He could feel Vegard at the back of his mind, like a homing beacon, guiding him down the smaller corridor.

They'd set a guard on it, a young lios alfr who, in the glow of a witchlight, turned the Circlet of Sælu over and over in his hands. Bård watched him for a good five minutes, creeping ever closer. When Brynjar had said these guys were master tacticians, somehow Bård doubted he'd been talking about this kid. He stole up silently, knowing that he would be invisible until he entered the witchlight's glow. 

When he was ready, he hid his hands in his sleeves and darted in, clamping one hand over the elf's mouth. With the other, he snatched the circlet from the elf's hands, and put it on him. The kid twitched violently, and let out a muffled cry.

"I'm gonna take my hand away from your mouth," Bård said. "Don't make a noise. If you make noise, I'm gonna take this off you and I'll take it right away, okay?" He removed his hand. The elf said nothing. He stared straight ahead, eyes wide, breathing ragged. 

It took Bård four tries to get the lock, but he managed eventually, and pulled the door open. Three men lay on the floor, two with dark curly hair and jeans and sweaters, one with honey-blond hair and a (very aptly named at this point) duster. Without hesitation, Bård undid one set of ropes, and pulled off the gag. "Come on, Vegard, let’s get this over with."

He got to his feet, dusting himself off. "I would have expected a moment’s indecision, at least."

"Do you think I don’t know my own brother?" Bård demanded. Dropping his voice so that the guard had no chance of hearing, he said, "Let's go. Sorry, changelings; this is a humans-only rodeo. You guys get to stay here to convince everyone we're securely behind bars. Be happy; you're safer here than just about anywhere."

Hurt black eyes glittered over one of the remaining gags; mild mismatched eyes topped the other. Bård met the latter. "Take care of each other."

Bård's cell phone said, in Brynjar's voice, "Most reassuredly. Go well, brothers."

Then they were gone, and the iron door clanked closed again.

***

"Did you have to be such a jerk?"

"I really did," Bård said, as the two of them walked through the corridor. "I don’t want them going after us."

"Are you sure we should have left them behind, though? They probably know more about magic than we do."

Bård nodded decisively. "If we fail, they’re the best plan B I can think of. And if it comes to it, if they have to seal the tunnels, I think the more magic you have, the more you'll fit in." He fished the overlays out from under his shirt, and handed them over. "You hang onto these, Vegard. You get to be the delicate flower for a little while."

He tucked them under his own shirt. "I think we have to change the plan," he said. "We're targets as we are. Now think how that's going to be if we're dragging along a giant wolf in a cage."

Bård nodded, seeing the wisdom in this. "You think we can leave Fenrir where he is? That'd sure make things simpler."

"I think, realistically speaking, we don't have a choice. Well?"

"Well what?"

"After you, little brother. It's my turn to be the delicate flower, remember?"

***

Lirikael Vinael jog-trotted through the tunnel they'd designated B13 on the map, a witchlight bobbing high above his head. Nearly over. It felt a little anticlimactic, going to release Fenrir when the Ylvisåkers were safely behind a foot of rock and two inches of iron and a dungeoner spell, but he was sure that Ragnarok would be climax enough.

Not that he doubted for a moment the rightness of his course, but he hadn't thought it would happen this way, with the riots and the demonstrations and the horrible accidents and the massacres. He supposed he'd been naïve to want it like it was in the prophecies, the glorious battle and the cleansing fire, the shattering of old things in preparation for the new ones. Instead, it just seemed like the old things were shaking themselves to pieces in the ugliest and most brutal ways possible. He reminded himself almost hourly now that being the hero the lios alfar needed was not supposed to be easy or comfortable, that it required tough decisions and difficult sacrifices. If he didn't carry them out, who would?

And the lios alfar most certainly did need a hero. When Iliel had contacted him with Fenrir's location, just before her arrest, he'd been aghast. What Vegard had planned to do was nothing short of diabolical. That the dálki had arrested Iliel instead of hunting down Vegard was a measure of how corrupt they'd become, how far the system had turned against all that was sane and reasonable. It was anyone's guess what had stopped the human from carrying out his evil plan, why he and his brother had ventured back into the hub and led Vinael's men on a merry chase that had cost at least one life. 

A noise jolted him from his reverie. His cell phone. Frowning, he looked at the display. Frowning harder, he slowed to a walk and answered. "Lord Aruviel?"

"How goes it, my boy?"

"It's...it's going well. The Ylvisåkers have been neutralized. Both of them. All I have to do is destroy the cage they had Fenrir in, and he’ll go free and Ragnarok can proceed."

"Vinael--"

"It's so good to talk to you again, my lord. I've felt very alone."

"Lirikael--"

"You wouldn't believe what they were going to do."

"My daughter built that cage," Aruviel said in a rush. 

"Oh. My lord, I'm so sorry. Their betrayal must cut you to the quick."

"They have ever been smart girls, and ever principled," the older elf sighed. "Just as I taught them."

"Lord Aruviel...what are you saying?"

"Melantha and Jessalyn have been to visit," Aruviel said, heavily. "They just left."

"It's two in the morning!"

There was amusement in the old elf's voice. "Even in Innilokun Ríki, being an elf-lord has its privileges. We talked for a long time, Lirikael. They...encouraged me to re-examine some facts that I had thought previously unconnected."

"Such as...?"

"You do know that before I took you under my wing, Lirikael--before you made an old man so very very proud--I attempted to do the same with Bård Ylvisåker."

"Yes, Lord Aruviel. "

"You know my training methods. You know that I can be a harsh taskmaster."

"Out of necessity, my lord."

"Mm. I wonder sometimes, Vinael. I have little else to do these days. Today the girls asked me to consider what my training methods might look like--what _all_ of this looks like--to someone who does not see the necessity. Say, a human. They were...quite compelling."

"What are you saying?" Vinael demanded again. "That a tough lesson justifies that thing's actions? That it was all a big misunderstanding?"

"No mercy, then, Lirikael? No mercy for the boy protecting his little brother?"

"Mercy is precious, and a coin we can ill afford to spend on our enemies. You taught me that, Lord Aruviel. With all due respect, I'm the one who's been on the ground in all this. I've seen what he can do. Whatever... _seed_...of a reason you might have given him, he's become monstrously powerful."

"My son--" 

"Look," he said, in a tone he had never before used with his mentor, "if I get out of this alive, I would welcome the chance to take this up with you at Hodmímmis holt, but right now I have a world to save from itself."

"I don't want you to die, Vinael!" Aruviel thundered. More softly, he said, "I don't want my daughters to die. Gods help me, I don't even want Jakob to die. Svartalfr, works in the kitchens with me sometimes. We trade insults. He's clever."

"Goodbye, Lord Aruviel," Vinael said softly, and ended the call. 

Now: the cage. It had not occurred to him, until he had voiced it to Aruviel, that he might not survive an encounter with Fenrir unbound. He slowed his steps a little. No...he mostly likely would not. He was going to his death. Well.

He would never reconcile with Sylvania. He would never see his son. Or daughter, a daughter would have been okay too. He would never hug his parents. He would never see the sun again. 

He supposed he couldn't even count on the reward of Valhalla anymore. Valhalla should have been emptied in preparation for Ragnarok, the warriors coming to join the battle against the primordial giants...but that assumed that Ragnarok would proceed as he'd been taught, and so far it hadn't. But you didn't do things to get to Valhalla, he reminded himself. You did things because they were right. 

Vinael set his jaw, swallowed back tears, and steeled himself. Tough decisions. Difficult sacrifices. 

With renewed purpose, he quickened his stride...and then stopped altogether. He heard something ahead of him. A voice might have been saying, "Run!" Then again, it might have been just panting. Yes, panting. Because around a bend, not fifteen feet away, Vegard Ylvisåker was standing facing him, free but not running, and he was quite alone. 

Vinael hesitated for only a moment. Then he drew a Smith & Wesson 629 and shot Vegard twice in the chest, once in each kneecap, and amused himself by aiming at the human’s groin before moving up and shooting him twice in the gut. The reports were quite loud.

Vegard listed to the side and sank down against the wall, looking distressed. "I...wasn't...'specting..." His breath hitched, blood dark on his lips under the dim blue witchlight.

"Lord Aruviel would be appalled," Vinael said stonily. "He didn’t understand how things have changed--just how bad things have gotten. When you’re fighting evil itself, you use all the resources at your disposal, because you simply can't afford to lose. And no matter what I do, you keep getting away. So I’m going to make sure now."

"Out of bullets," Vegard panted, wrapping his arms around himself as if to hold his insides in. "I was--I don't care if it's empty, don't point that at stuff you don't plan on shooting!--I was counting. Missed my heart. Arteries too. Head would've been smarter."

Vinael's lip wrinkled. "I'm a pragmatist, not a mercenary. You'll have oblivion soon enough, but first there's justice to be done." He holstered the gun, and arranged his fingers into the doomsign. "Vegard Urheim Ylvisåker, this is your doom: to die here in the bowels of the earth, forsaken and in agony. To fail, so, so close to your goal. To live long enough to hear the screams of the wicked perishing, knowing that you were within inches of succeeding in your foul plan. To draw your last breath knowing that the world you helped twist and corrupt will now be cleansed, and to feel the full extent of your crimes."

Vegard grimaced a little, and brought up more blood. His eyes, full of pain, slid closed. 

Vinael prodded the limp body with his toe, and walked away. That was every bit as satisfying as he had hoped. Well...it wasn't, really, but it was as good as he was going to get, so he would be satisfied. 

Behind him, he heard motion in the tunnel. For a moment he was seized with the worry that the sound might be the brother, but there was no howl of anguish or rage, not even a sigh of relief. He turned, his little witchlight hovering above him, and saw nothing in the blackness. Final convulsions, then, most likely, and even if they weren't, you didn't come back from a killing curse. Vinael's job wasn't quite done yet, but the long nightmare that had been Vegard Ylvisåker was over.

***

Vinael had never been to Bifrost in person before. It was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen, an arc of shifting, dazzling shafts of light, refracted into every colour of the rainbow. This end of it spilled onto the tunnel floor like a tide of light frozen in the act of rushing in, its colours dancing on the rock walls. The other end was lost in a brilliance that seemed to run on to infinity.

The Ylvisåkers had had the audacity to move Fenrir onto the bridge itself before deactivating the rescue pallets the cage sat on. The wolf had been licking the last of the elfshot out of its fur; now it pushed itself up on his front legs and growled as Vinael climbed onto the bridge and started methodically dismantling the wards. It wouldn't understand that he was trying to set it free. There was some comfort, though, in the thought that one of his last sights would be the rainbow bridge. 

With his dagger and with little spells, he worked away at one end of the cage, loosening the wooden joints, knocking out pegs, splintering the bars. Wood--ash, precisely, long and strong--had been needed for the containment spells, but it wouldn't stand up to a concerted effort to dismantle it. In ten minutes, a tug pulled the front of the cage free. As he drew it clear of the rest of the structure, the wood settled oddly. Vinael stepped back, holding the cage front. The bars formed a sort of shield, he supposed, but he was ready to die with teeth in his throat at any moment. 

Fenrir sniffed the air and walked, hesitantly, out of the cage. Something made it stagger a bit, and it whimpered a little and licked one forepaw. 

"Lirikael." 

Vinael, in the process of lowering the front of the cage to the tunnel floor, froze. The voice was all around him, echoing through the tunnels. Underneath it there was another noise, very soft, something like a whispered chanting. _Pull it, feed it..._

Vinael heaved the wood away and to the side, and heard it splinter. 

"Lirikael."

He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and whirled, his knees turning to water. This was sorcery beyond anything he'd ever seen. Vegard’s broken body was propped up at the mouth of the cage. Impossibly, there was not only life in his eyes but a wild light, and a fierce, bloody grin on his face. "Good stuff back there. The gun? Genius. The curse? Even better. Kudos for knowing the Urheim thing." His smile broadened, and his shoulders started to shake with laughter. 

"What's so funny?" Vinael demanded.

"You screwed up."

Past a tightness in his chest, Vinael said, "I beg your pardon?"

"My name is Finn."

Vinael started forward, and fell on his face. He rolled, and looked incredulously at his feet. His bootlaces were tied together.

***

Finn Weber couldn't stifle another giggle, one that made more sap burst from his lips. Wheezing, he let the second overlay fall onto Bifrost, and breathed the last of his magic onto it. Bigger magic flared impossibly bright for a second, dazzling him, before it subsided. It pooled on the floor, lapping its way up the chamber walls and arcing between stones, throwing him to the ground.

Fenrir yelped and tried to bolt. He snarled as a sheet of shifting, shimmering light drove him back. His head darted out, and he snapped at Finn, jaws closing over the changeling's body. 

Bård lunged out of the shadows. "Finn!"

"I taste bad," Finn said reassuringly. There were teeth buried in his chest. He pointed to Lirikael Vinael, who had taken off his shoes and was running for the door in his sock feet. "Worry about him!" 

Bård hung back for just a moment. "I'll come back for you!"

"GO!"

And Bård ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Pegboard Nerds' "Hero" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lLclBfKj48


	23. The Gift of a Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Safekeeping / The wrap-up / Bless

Vegard came back from a place that had been the grey of rock and sea and steel, the red of blood and fire. He was tightly cocooned in something. At first, he relaxed into the warmth, but his face was covered, and when he shifted a little to get a fresh breath, the cocoon fell apart. 

He had been curled up with his back against Sleipnir’s belly, and Brynjar had bundled him up in the duster and held onto him. Now, with a witchlight dim above them, Brynjar let him sit up. Vegard noticed that their gags, and Brynjar’s ropes, were gone. "What happened?"

"Vinael tried to cursing you. I protected your body and put your mind someplace safe."

Vegard shuddered, and used his bound hands to pull the duster around himself. "That place was _safe_?"

"Saferer than a curse. It were badly executed, aimed wrong, and out of range, but very nastified, and with the wild magics gallopping, I wouldst not chance you."

"Thanks for that," Vegard said. Brynjar drew a finger across the ropes binding his hands and ankles, and they parted. Vegard used his freedom to huddle deeper into the duster. "You mean...you’ve been able to do that all along?"

Brynjar shrugged. "If a killing curse has been spoked against you, I thinks the time to protect you is over, and the time to aid Finn and Bård has begun."

Vegard got to his feet, jumped up and down a little to get the blood flowing again and warm himself up, and reluctantly handed back the duster. "Let me guess: Sleipnir has always been able to get in and out, too?"

"Since returning from ambulance duty she have been keeping her eyes on Fenrir. She ventured forth when he were found. When I felt your true name spoken in the presence of the doomsign, I flinged your mind aside and bade her enter. She are capital at kicking in locks." Brynjar swirled on his duster, and held the door open for Vegard. 

"Oi!" Vegard cried. Per Kristtorn sprang back from the door in a scattering of lockpicks and gently glowing glyphs, and Astrid, Fareshta, Mohammed, and Marius scrambled to their feet, witchlights bobbing above their heads. A little further down the tunnel, arms and legs splayed out in front of him like a ragdoll, was a young lios alfr bound hand and foot and wearing the Circlet of Sælu. 

"Vegard!" Per cried. "I...I guess you figured it out on your own."

"Brynjar and Sleipnir did," Vegard said, gesturing to them as they emerged behind him.

The five drew back at the sight of Sleipnir. "He’s on your side, then?" Marius said.

"She is my loveliest lovely," Brynjar said with a silly smile on his face, reaching up to scratch Sleipnir between the ears.

"We thought Vinael put him there to guard the door, and we kept trying to find ways of scaring him off without hurting him, but he wouldn’t scare," Fareshta explained. "Otherwise, we would have been working at that lock half an hour ago."

"We’re going to find Bård and Finn," Vegard told them. "Do you have the gadflies?"

Per nodded. 

The air seemed, suddenly, to change, to prickle. Some powerful bit of magic had just been done in the tunnels. 

"Follow us," Vegard said. Brynjar had already bounded onto Sleipnir’s back. Vegard spared a moment to stroke Sleipnir’s muzzle in thanks, and then scrambled up behind Brynjar, and held on. Sleipnir lurched to her feet and scuttled forward with a whinny. Behind them, four engines hummed to life.

***

They’d been travelling for perhaps fifteen minutes, sometimes sideways to get through the narrow tunnels, when Sleipnir came to a halt of her own accord. Above her, Brynjar's witchlight kept going for a bit before it bounced back. Whether it had been spider-sense or horse-sense, a moment later, Vegard heard something too. They had lost the gadflies soon after setting out, but this sound was ahead of them. At first it was lost in echo, but as it drew closer, it resolved into heavy breathing and soft running steps.

A lios alfar came barrelling towards them. Sleipnir, surprised, reared up on four legs. Vegard recognized Lirikael Vinael. "Stop him!" he cried, sliding off the horse's back. Vinael skidded to a halt, and tried to backpedal. He was, Vegard noticed, barefoot, his socks in bloody shreds around his ankles.

Sleipnir looked back--Vegard could have sworn he saw amusement in her eight eyes--and, still reared, darted forward. She seized the screaming Vinael and passed him from leg to leg until he was under her middle. When she passed him back up, he was wound from toes to shoulders in...horse silk. 

But the tunnel still echoed with footsteps, louder ones. Vegard sang up his own witchlight and ventured forward, watching the dancing shadow shorten. 

The figure, instead of slowing, launched itself at him. "Vegard!" Bård cried, giving him a fierce hug. "You got him!"

Vegard stepped back, and then he scowled at Bård and cuffed his arm. "I can't believe you got it wrong. Didn’t you hear me in your head?"

Bård snorted, rubbing his arm. "I heard you. And I didn’t get it wrong. Like I said back there, you think I don’t know my own brother?"

"Where is Finn?" Brynjar demanded from atop Sleipnir. 

"He’s back with Fenrir. He took a lot of damage. He told me to catch Vinael and not worry, but I think he’s going to need help getting back."

Brynjar slid from the horse’s back. "I go."

"Me too," said Vegard. "If I understand right, whatever happened to him was meant for me." He looked guiltily at his brother. "I guess you understood that before I did. Bård, can you and Sleipnir take Vinael back to Varggrav?"

Bård cast a nervous look at Sleipnir, but he said, "If she knows the way."

"She do," Brynjar said. "Also somewhere behind us rideth Per and his friends."

A soft noise made them turn. Vinael, in his silk cocoon, was crying. 

Vegard patted the cocoon where he judged the elf’s shoulder to be. "Get your hands off me," Vinael snapped.

Bård said, "He’s trying to be kind to you. The man you tried to _murder_ is being kind to you."

Vegard took his hand away. He clasped his brother’s shoulder, for a moment, and then he and Brynjar set off for Bifrost.

***

At a run, it didn’t take them long to reach the chamber. Fenrir lay on the bridge, muzzle on his paws, looking glum. Finn leaned against his side, ruined legs splayed out in front of him.

Vegard approached the wolf warily, but Fenrir didn’t lift his head. His tail thumped the ground twice. "Finn! We met Bård. He and Sleipnir have Vinael."

"It’s okay, Vegard," Finn said, and there was something odd about his voice. "Fenrir won’t hurt you." His hand came up clumsily, and patted the hairy side. "I think he feels bad about biting me earlier."

"You trapped him on Bifrost?" Vegard said wonderingly.

Finn’s smile was one of pure happiness. "Not just Bifrost. He has all of Asgard now. Even if we _could_ have moved him to the place your friends picked, it was dark and small and empty. So I gave him meadows and sunshine and an endless supply of goats. And Geri and Freki and Huginn and Muninn for company. And if gods ever want to move back in, there’s still plenty of room. It’s a big world, and if he’s got enough food and nobody hassles him, he won’t bother anyone. It’s perfect."

"Has you healed enough to walks yet?" Brynjar asked, crouching at his side.

"No," Finn said, and his smile changed a little.

"Okay. We’ll carrying you."

"No," Finn told him, with a little laugh. Amber sap sprayed from his lips, and he grimaced and wiped it away with an already-soaked sleeve. "Lord Thiradiel tried to warn me. I don't know if it was the bullets or the curse or the chunk Fenrir took out of my side or the end of the mission or the combination of everything, but the lattices are decaying. I'm not going to heal. I'm dying." He raised his voice over Vegard's cry of protest. "You two go. Vegard, you and Bård go home to your families, and tell them how beautiful they are, and how lucky they are to have you. Tell them I said that. Tell Helene she’s formidable and I’m glad that she’s in your life. Tell Melantha Aruviel she’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever spoken with or seen or fought alongside and I’m so fortunate to have met her. Brynjar, thank you for being Brynjar. You go and...be Brynjar. Don't wait for it to be over; I'm still tough, and it's gonna take me a long time." 

"No, no, no," Vegard said, kneeling at Finn’s side. The changeling was riddled with holes, and his side was a sappy mess. Vegard put a hand on Finn’s head. He was unnaturally cool to the touch, and there was something subtly wrong with the texture of his skin. "No no no no no..."

"This was always the plan, Vegard. If one of us had to die, it was always supposed to be me."

"My friend..." Brynjar said softly. 

"No no no no no no..."

"Haven't you ever heard this kind of story? The magical friend gives his life for the ordinary boy. And you go back to your life a little sadder, a little kinder, a little more appreciative."

Vegard broke off his litany to let out a roar of frustration. "I'm thirty-six years old, thank you, and quite kind! And very appreciative, and not particularly ordinary, and I don't think I need to be sadder. And _you_ are not a narrative device to make me do anything; you're a person." 

"I was. For a little while. It was fun. I’m glad to have gotten the chance."

"But my friend..."

"It’s okay, Brynjar. I’m okay. I’m not afraid. For the first time since infusion, I don’t have anything to be afraid of."

Vegard took out the sharp little knife that he carried with him. Decades of films and television made him contemplate his thumb for a little while, but hands were dirty and full of nerve endings, and a cut on the thumb was the worst. In the end, with a little hiss of pain, he made a small, shallow cut about halfway up his forearm. He took out his phone to check the picture of the glyph, dabbed his finger in the blood, and reached for Finn's forehead.

"Vegard," Finn said, catching his arm, "what are you doing?" The effort winded him.

"I'm a stupid human," Vegard said. "I'm just saving my friend with a thing I saw never mind where." But he pulled his hand back. He’d had enough of just ploughing ahead and winding up with a tonne of unintended consequences. "Tell me."

"I don't know," Finn confessed. "All I know is that it's blood magic, and very illegal, and extremely powerful, and something about it scares the hell out of me on an instinctive level."

"What were you planning to paints?" Brynjar asked.

Vegard showed him the picture. He tried to keep his finger off the screen, and got blood all over it anyway, to his disgust.

Brynjar nodded. "That glyph mean, 'Be thou whole.'"

"Seems innocuous enough. Does it have meanings I don’t know about?"

"It depend. Finn and I would has had a version of this written on our foreheads in a mixture of our sap and infusion fluid in orders to animate us, to makify us whole under the terms of the fluid. That didn't count as blood magic until after the law passeded, so it was dodgy but legal."

"And when the--if, say, hypothetically speaking, it was written on my forehead in my own blood?"

"It would heals all injuries and restores you to yourself."

"Should I use Finn's...whatever that is instead?"

Brynjar shrugged. "You can, and it will restores him as a changeling. And in that instance, I don't think it matter whether he gives it freely or not."

"For what it’s worth, I don’t," Finn said.

"Although you can compel him to agrees, if it make you feels better." 

That seemed like it would defeat the purpose. "What will my blood do to him?"

"You are his original. Your blood would not only restores him, but also transforms him. It would mean something like, ‘Be thou a whole man like me.’"

"I’m not sure that’s such a good idea," Finn said rapidly.

"Why not?" Vegard asked.

"He fears being the hollow man that you created in your song," Brynjar said, "and seeing into his secret terrors, I has, to my shame, used them for teasing, for revenge, once to protectify him. To my own dismayance, rather than sees how unlike that man he is, he have decided that I must be right, and spends his life in atonement for being a person he never were."

"Look," Finn said, "I am what I was made. And the world doesn’t need more douchebags."

"As I am what I was made?" Brynjar demanded. "I doubts Bård had this me in mind when he was creating Brynjar Kvam. Forget Ragnarok, Vegard. Finn saves forty-nine people in the studio explosion. He could have getted clear, but instead he runned around the neighbourhood, harvesting numbers and phoning them to warns everyone away. He lookeded after me most tenderly when my brain was holified. The day we were borned he sang your daughter to sleep."

"Oh, Finn..."

"But I have nothing left, Vegard. Not all the ridiculous stuff I’m supposed to be so proud of, but not any of the things that are supposed to really matter, either. No beautiful family like yours. No home. No special talents that I know of..."

"Now that’s not--"

Finn rolled his eyes. "Okay, none beyond the ability to alienate people and speak enthusiastically about consumer products. I used to have a purpose, and now that that's done, all I have is...this. A ridiculous counterfeit life. The best thing I can think to do with it is give it for the people who really matter to me. The people I’ve been honoured to call my friends."

Vegard sighed. "When you put it like that, Finn...all right." 

Finn smiled. "Thank you," he whispered. "It really is better this way."

"But then it has to be your life, Finn. Not a death. Go out and have a long, happy, loving, full life, and share _that_ with us."

Finn covered his face. "I wanted to," he said. "You can’t believe how much I wanted that. But it wasn’t what I was _for_. And what I was for is over now."

"You get to decide what you’re for now. If you need help, we’ll help," Vegard promised.

Brynjar nodded. "Of courses." He lowered his eyes, and took one of Finn’s sap-smeared hands in both of his own. "Finn, my friend. My brother."

Tears stood in Finn's eyes. "Brynjar, we’re not even the same species."

"Mayhaps not before the beginninging, but we were borned together, with the DNA of brothers. People expect us to be brothers. You has cared for me like a brother. You hung on the ash at my side. You are the only one who knows. Leaveth me not alone in the world, the only one of my kind."

With a snort that left him coughing up more sap, Finn said, "It’s far too late for that, Brynjar." He glanced at Vegard only a moment before turning his eyes to the ground with a resigned little sniffle. "I’ve been waiting for awhile for you to just do it."

"It is bestest if you want to be willing to do it of your own free will," Brynjar said,

"Yeah, well, this is as much of a yes as you’re going to get.” 

Vegard looked down at his finger. The blood was tacky now. 

"From thy tongue," Brynjar said. "And use thy ring finger, and put thy magic behind it."

Vegard made a face, and got a mouthful of blood from his arm. He sat for a moment to quell the nausea that arose in him. Then, looking at his phone to make sure he had it right, he drew the glyph on Finn's forehead, humming softly. He chose the nine-note chorus from Modestep’s "Saved the World"; it seemed appropriate.

The moment Vegard was finished drawing, Finn’s breathing became laboured. His eyes first lost focus and then rolled back in his skull, and his head lolled. His mangled legs kicked out a couple of times. 

Fenrir made a _whuff_ ing noise deep in his chest, and the great head came up to look back at them.

"Don’t let him gets at the blood!" Brynjar said in sudden alarm.

Fenrir shot him a look of contempt. He put out a tongue the size of a hand towel and licked the side of Finn’s head, very careful to avoid the glyph. 

"Brynjar?" Vegard mumbled around the blood on his own tongue. "Bård and I have some of the same DNA. Do you want this too?"

"Me?"

Vegard shrugged. "Yeah, why not? I've still got blood here."

Brynjar chuckled. "I hope you never _learns_ magic, Vegard. You're completefully adorable. But are you sure that you want to release a man, pardon, a mannish thing like me into the world, no strings attached?"

Vegard considered, while Finn twitched and jerked. Finally, he said, "I don’t think that should ever have been my decision to make. Besides, if I make you a man like me, that reflective constitution thing goes away, right?"

"I will progressify no furtherer into what people believe me to be."

"Then this seems safest to me. Because you did hang on that ash for nine days, and that eye of yours seems to see everything. Don’t get me wrong, I think you’re great exactly as you are, but I worry what would happen if people started believing you were a god. Because then there’s that little bitty chance that you’d become one, right?"

"A possibility, but I reminds you that you has seen the death of one god and now seek to prevents the formation of another. Are you sure about this atheism of yours, if you maintain it only because you keep getting rid of us?"

Vegard thought about this, running a thumb--the only part of his hand not bloody--against his upper lip. He was suddenly very tired, of all of this. He said, "That’s not how I maintain it. Or why. I'm in the Home Guard and I grew up in two war zones, and I don’t believe in war, either. So the line between god and not-god is a lot blurrier than it used to be, and if you and Odin count, I have to concede that gods exist. But nothing can make me believe that’s a good idea. Anyway, I’m not forcing you. I’m just offering." 

"You could forcing me. While you still can. Given your feelings, I would understands."

"Just offering." 

"No matter what it costing you?"

Vegard shook his head once, firmly. "The only thing I know is that it would cost much more to keep you down and pretend that's somehow all right than it would cost to just pull you up."

Brynjar smiled beatifically, and leaned forward, and closed his eyes. Vegard drew the glyph on his forehead, and hummed. When Brynjar opened his eyes, _something_ had changed, although Vegard couldn’t say what.

Brynjar's grey eye fixed upon his own, and Vegard drew in breath as he felt the shock of recognition. He looked for a long, long time. Then Brynjar put a hand behind his head and gently drew him down, and planted a kiss on the top of his head, and drew him back up.

"Okay, Brynjar, that was a little weird," Vegard said, shivering with a sudden freshening of the air.

"No. What's weird is you calling me Brynjar," Bård said, from somewhere behind him. 

Vegard bolted to his feet, turning and turning. It felt like the ground was shifting beneath him, clutching at his legs. They were outside, in the middle of a field, surrounded by long damp grass and a chill fog that obscured everything. "Where are we? _Where are we?_ " 

"Easy, easy," Bård said. "We're next to a road just outside of Kvikkjokk. Magnus texted like ten minutes ago and said he and Calle were fifteen minutes away, so I sent Per and company back to the city to get some sleep. They said to tell you a fond goodbye, but threatened to turn me into a badger if I woke you. I'm about sixty percent sure they were kidding."

"I was asleep?" Vegard bent down and picked up a small pillow and an exquisitely woven mohair blanket from the dew-soaked grass. The blanket was wound around his legs. He felt terrible, now, for stepping on them. 

"Yeah. You've been out like a light since I got back to Bifrost."

Vegard folded the blanket. Fortunately, his feet hadn't damaged it. "Fill me in. What about Finn and Brynjar? Are they all right?"

"Oh, yeah. Well, Finn was spooked and a little out of it at first, but I guess multiple gunshot wounds and being half eaten by a giant wolf will do that to you. He healed up fine though. I was really relieved: all the time that I was carrying him to Bifrost, he swore he was mending, but I didn't see it. Anyway. And Brynjar was...you know. Brynjar. He and Sleipnir ran in and got everyone’s stuff from Asgard, by the way," he said, gesturing to a pile of things which Vegard was happy to see included his bucket. "Melantha and Jessalyn left to bring them back to Oslo half an hour ago."

" _Melantha and Jessalyn?_ "

"They send hugs. Apparently they all fought Fenrir together, but the girls wondered about their reception in Varggrav, so they went to visit their dad instead. And he’s had some kind of change of heart."

"Seriously?"

"I guess it’s been slowly building since he got into prison and actually got to meet some svartalfar. When Jessalyn got assaulted by people in the name of his cause, he started to shy away, and Fenrir was the last straw."

"Well...that’s nice. That’s good." Vegard let out a little laugh. "I'm sorry I missed all that."

Bård raised an index finger. "Now, here’s the part that interests me. When Melantha saw Finn, she ran to him, lifted him up, spun him around, and kissed him full on the lips. He looked absolutely enchanted, and then his face kind of fell, and he said, ‘Not Vegard.’ And she kissed him again--there might have been tongue the second time, judging by the way his eyes bugged out--and when they came up for air, she said, ‘Perfect, because _that_ would have been awkward.’"

"Oi," Vegard said, eyes large. He thought about it a bit. "Are we sure we're okay with that? They're both wonderful people, but she's a little bit pushy sometimes, and he's a three-week-old with self-esteem issues."

"Concerns noted and shared, but it's not our decision to make," Bård said. "Brynjar's got his back. And I gave them all our numbers." 

The mist was as thick as ever, but the noise of an engine and a certain lightness to the fog in one direction alerted them to the approach of a car. Bård led them out to the road, where they were in time to wave down Calle and Magnus in a green Toyota Camry. 

The car stopped, and they ran to the back doors. Vegard shoved the pillow and blanket in his backpack, and hoped they wouldn’t get everything else wet. Then he and Bård climbed back into their old world and their old lives, into a warm car that smelled of leather and air freshener and two men who had spent sixteen hours taking turns driving. 

"You guys look like somebody ran over a couple of hobbits with a lawnmower," Magnus observed, not unkindly.

"You two look a little rough yourselves. You do know you’re supposed to travel in the car, not under it?" Bård shot back, doing up his seatbelt. 

The Camry started to move again. "Well?" Calle said.

"Well?"

"What happened? I think you at least owe me the story this time."

Bård passed a hand over his eyes. "Oh, gods. Where do we begin?"

"At the beginning," Calle said.

"Gods?" said Magnus.

"Well," Bård said, "it began the night of the special. I was walking out of the building, and--"

"No," Vegard said, clutching the back of Calle’s seat. His eyes, which had been starting to close again, were now very wide. "No."

"No?"

"It began on St. Hans, in 2007. We were filming _Norway’s Most Wonderful_ , and we’d gotten a tip about a hermit in a chapel about two hours outside of Løddesøl..." His memory had opened up like a flower, a floodgate, a steely grey eye, and the story came pouring out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Modestep's "Saved the World" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUoypQIJY94  
> Or depending on your degree of appreciation for the ethereal mingling of the dub and the step, the xKore remix of same - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK58gu2u-JI


	24. Nyheter fra Ingen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Omega / The second weirdest question / Rusty / Who pays for the beer / Ylvis tre / The sleeper wakes

_October, 2016_

Few leaves clung to the trees in Marienlyst, and the scent of snow was on the air. Vegard was fifteen minutes early, but the sun was still very low in the sky when he got to the coffee shop, a little independent place that he’d never been to but that got excellent reviews. He was wearing the contacts from Kai, for the first time in months. As he walked in the door, he whistled the little reveal spell to himself. It was just a soundkey, not real magic, but it was as close as he could get these days, and it was awfully fun.

A gawky, lanky, chinless teenager at a table by himself rippled, and suddenly he was Finn Weber.

Vegard accepted a bone-crushing hug, returned a somewhat gentler one, and then stepped back to look at his erstwhile doppelgänger. Finn was wearing black skinny jeans, a cream-coloured cable knit sweater, an outlandish patchwork jacket in which the dominant colours were red and goldenrod, and a beret. He’d gotten square little brass-framed glasses, and his hair was past his shoulders. "Vegard," he said, "you’re looking really well."

"I’m feeling much better," Vegard said. "I’m glad I went through with the show. It helped more than I could have imagined."

"All that energy from the crowd," Finn said. "You sit down. I’m getting this. They have an orchid latte you have to try."

Vegard didn’t like the sound of an anything latte, but he sat.

Finn returned with drinks and cake. He had a regular latte and a slice of mint chocolate cake that looked to have about an inch of icing on it. For Vegard he’d gotten dulce de leche cheesecake and some kind of white confection decorated with flowers and walnuts. Vegard drank, and fell in love. "My god!" he exclaimed, licking sweet floral-scented foam off his upper lip. "So...what’s happening?"

"Omega loves _News from Nobody_ ," Finn said, leaning forward. "We still have stuff to work out and segments to film, but we air March 7."

"Really great!" Vegard said. "Is there a way for us to see it?"

"We’ll make sure you do somehow," Finn assured him. "Don’t get the wrong idea, though; it’s not like yours. More like, I don’t know, _The Rick Mercer Report_ or _The Daily Show_." A look of rapture crossed his face. "Oh, you should see Brynjar interview! He asks the most nonsensical questions, and just sits and looks at you with his head cocked in a funny way and this quizzical little smile on his face, and you try to answer him the best you can, and end up saying things you never intended to say. He's devastating. It’s a remarkable feeling, and no one on the crew can figure out if it's magic or people skills or nerves or what. So we're giving one interview to him and one to me, and then he does news of course, and the street segments are mostly me."

"And Jessalyn?" 

"She does a thing called Today in the Bright Court. She’s brilliantly funny, Vegard. Why did you never snap her up for your show?"

"When I met her, she was just a girl, and her thing was carpentry, and there was no show. Do she and Brynjar...get along?"

"They get along. I don't know what made me think I could eat all this cake. Look at this. Um...I think Brynjar has a little crush on her, but you kind of have to know him _really_ well to pick up on it. Not sure it's requited."

"Ah."

"Helene and the kids well?"

"Very well." Vegard pulled an envelope out of the bag he’d been carrying. "Helene sends hugs. Emma and Mads made you a card."

Finn opened the card. It was very sparkly. "Oh! It has macaroni!"

"Uh, yeah. Sorry. That wasn’t supposed to be on there, but I have a two-year-old..."

"It’s perfect. I love it." Finn leaned forward. "And how are you?"

"Even better than last time. I’d say I’m completely recovered, but objectively speaking I’m probably around ninety percent." For April and most of May, Vegard had stumbled around in a fog of good-natured fatigue, sleeping twelve hours a night, completing day-to-day activities only with the help of frequent naps. Doctors had run a full battery of tests, and found him to be in perfect shape. They'd even suggested antidepressants if he still felt the same way in June, but by then his energy was coming back, and it had climbed steadily, with a big jump in September, right when he needed it. 

"That’s good to hear," Finn said. "You’ll be all the way back by Christmas, I’m sure of it. And I’m so sorry about all of it." 

"I was lucky, really," Vegard said, with a wave of his hand. "I read up on it, and after the kind of head injury I had, some people have seizures for up to two years." Shock registered on Finn’s face, and he looked like he was about to say something, but Vegard changed the subject in a hurry. "Speaking of things that have dragged on and on, how is your petition for standing going?"

Finn blinked a couple of times at the sudden shift, but then he said, "They say it'll be granted next month. Finally."

"Just in time for the election!"

Finn snorted. "Where are we going to find a grandparent? Even if Dr. Freidag can get support for a repeal, it's not going through in time for this election."

"Right." Vegard stared deep into his cheesecake for a few seconds. Then he said, "Bergen."

"What?"

"Well, you came from us, right? So we’re a little bit like your parents. Our father would never go for it, but we can certainly get our mum to vouch for you."

"Your mum knows about...all this?"

"No, but by this point she just goes with the flow. It won't be the weirdest question I've ever asked her, trust me." His voice dropped, gentled. "And how’s Melantha?"

Finn took a deep breath, and Vegard braced himself for more bad news. "You remember in June, we asked you a question?"

"Yeah," Vegard said, and his throat tightened as he thought of Finn’s beaming face on that day. It had been a happy day, but now he would never be able to divorce it from Brynjar’s tear-sodden voice cutting in on the radio one dreadful August morning. 

"Does your answer still hold?"

Vegard raised his head, tears still bright in his wide brown eyes. "Of course. Of course, Finn. I would be honoured." He thought of a million things to say, and thought they would all be they wrong thing, so he just stared, and listened.

"She found out last week. I don’t know, I... I’m still scared as hell. And I think she is too. But maybe things will be different. Maybe I’m far enough along in my transformation that...I won’t..." 

"You think that’s what it was?" Vegard asked.

Finn shrugged with one shoulder, resolutely looking at his cake. "I don’t know. We're being careful every way we can."

"If there's anything we can do, let us know."

The door of the coffee shop opened then, letting in a dash of cool, damp air, and Bård and Brynjar came in together. Bård was wearing his black leather, jeans and an xkcd t-shirt, and a scarf. Brynjar wore his duster over brown corduroys and a tweed jacket with a lavender and yellow bowtie over an Iron Maiden t-shirt. He still carried his walking stick. Vegard knew now from experience that the spell he’d used worked imperfectly on brains, and Brynjar, having been made whole, still spoke oddly, had mismatched eyes, and reacted to fatigue by limping slightly and slurring words, although right now he seemed to be well rested enough. He went to Vegard and pulled him up into a warm hug. "Vegard! You looks much improvementated."

"Nearly back to normal," Vegard assured him, patting his back as he pulled back. "And you look--"

"Like Fifth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctor all had a kid together?" Bård suggested. 

"Bowties are cool," Brynjar huffed in English. 

"You keep using that word ‘cool,’" Finn said, also in English. "I do not think it means what you think it means."

"Now that we’ve established that we all get way too much screen time," Vegard said, "how are you?"

"Life are good. Sleipnir sending love." Vegard wasn’t quite sure where Brynjar stabled the horse--or where he himself lived, for that matter, because "driving distance" didn’t seem to mean quite the same thing to Brynjar as to other people. "Come, Finn, stands in line with me so I can finding Bård this wondrous drink of which you speak."

Vegard and Bård watched them get into line, the men that Vegard tried not to think of as changelings anymore. On those rare occasions when Finn and Brynjar were with the brothers unglamoured, Bård and Vegard would introduce them as cousins, to explain the resemblance; they'd even made up a story that the song had been inspired by poor cousin Finn always getting mistaken for Vegard. "Brynjar needs Finn with him now?" Vegard said. "He doesn’t just know anymore?"

"Or he wants to give us time to talk. I've felt you...wondering at me. For days now."

Clever Brynjar. Of course. "It didn't seem appropriate to raise in the office..."

"What is it?" Bård asked. 

"It never occurred to me to ask before: how are _you_?"

"I’m okay. You know. Life is weird, but... Why?"

"Back in Varggrav," Vegard said, "I remember wondering how I would go back to my old life. You know, knowing now that there’s all this other stuff going on. And then it was moot, because it was all I could do get through a day, and there was no room for anything else. But now that I’m feeling better, it feels like it’s all...starting up again. And I’m okay with it. It’s reintroducing itself gradually. But that makes me wonder about you."

Bård shrugged. "Hell, I tried. But it was a bit of a zoo when we came back. I wanted to spend time with Maria and the kids, the office was freaking out, Mum and Dad and Bjarte were freaking out, my big brother was sick with I didn’t know what... I had everything I could handle right there. The third time I got mistaken for Brynjar on the street, I switched my contacts out. It’s all still there, but...most of the time, I don’t see it."

"Oh," Vegard said.

"Don’t get me wrong, I still get e-mails from everyone. I answer them. Aaaaaand every so often, back when the weather was warmer, my son’s imaginary friend would join us for a glass of wine in the backyard. I’d put my contacts in for that, and then I had to sort of relay everything she’s saying to Maria, but she’s got excellent taste in wine." He frowned at himself. "I should just e-mail Kai about getting contacts for Maria, is what I should do. If she wants them."

"Ask him, while you’re at it," Vegard said, "why being able to see them makes us able to hear them, too. I know there're audio-only filters too, but you and I didn't need any aud--"

"Vegard, it’s _magic_."

"That’s not an answer." Vegard looked up from the dregs of his orchid latte. "Do you ever...?"

"What? No!"

"Why not?"

"Well...because you can’t. It wouldn’t be fair."

Vegard shook his head. "I think you should anyway. If I lost my voice, you wouldn’t quit singing, would you?"

Bård looked like he was about to argue. Then he got a silly smile on his face, and hummed at a few spilled grains of sugar. He frowned at them then, and the frown got deeper and deeper and more perplexed, and eventually he made them quiver before exhaling a little burst of air and settling down against the back of his chair. "Saying I told you so is very bad form."

"I know," Vegard said, annoyed. "I didn’t say it; I thought it."

"At least that doesn’t fade."

"No," Vegard agreed, "but we should probably be working harder to keep that up, too."

Brynjar and Finn were back, then. Finn had another latte for himself, and there were three more orchid lattes. Bård and Brynjar each took one; Vegard gathered the other was for himself. 

"You didn't have to do that," he said, showing them his half-full cup.

"Least we could do," Finn said, looking uncomfortable. 

Bård eyed Finn and Brynjar. "Does this have something to do with the beer? Because we told you, that's cleared up now." Gisela had e-mailed both brothers the week after their homecoming, letting them know that she'd put forward a motion at the first meeting of the Samkoma after Fenrir had been returned to Asgard. The motion would have reimbursed the brothers for expenses incurred during their ordeal--particularly the two hundred and fifty thousand kroner Finn had put on Vegard's credit card to lure Universitetet i Nordland students out of Fenrir's path--but after a lot of soul-searching, and some discussions with their accountants, Bård and Vegard had begged her to withdraw it. Considering the amount of rebuilding there was for the elves to do, and the brothers' habitual frugality, they could absorb the cost of some hotels and meals and camping equipment. As for the beer, Brynjar had been quite clear, in his announcement, that it was sponsored by _Tonight With Ylvis_ , so Concorde TV was going to cover it. As advertising. The accountants had grumbled, but they were making it work, and the university had loaned them space and equipment for a segment that might have otherwise been quite expensive, and viewing numbers were way up in Bodø, so it wasn't a total loss. 

(Vegard didn't know it, but Bård _had_ e-mailed Gisela privately and asked if she could arrange amnesty for any crimes they might have committed in the course of running away from the Peace Division's trumped-up charges against them. In the aftermath of Fenrir's release and recapture, as the Samkoma and the dálki had worked to find out just what had happened and how, they had uncovered some unsavoury connections, including the implication of associates of Ljón Guriel Abatrael in the Ullern explosion, and the Samkoma had readily voted to grant amnesty to the Ylvisåkers, as well as to Per Kristtorn and his friends.)

"You've just both been wonderful," Finn said, misting over. "Everyone has."

Bård put a hand on Finn's arm. "Hey. Brynjar told me your news. Congratulations. Good luck."

"Thanks. We're hoping." Finn stirred his latte. "I guess that means I have to get to Sweden sooner than later."

"Business in Varggrav?" Vegard said hopefully. If so, he would give Finn the money for a whole case of hardeblomster. 

Finn looked embarrassed. "I’m loath to leave Melly for any length of time, but at some point soon I have to have a drink with Fenrir."

"A...wait, what?"

"Before I left, I promised him that I would come back and visit him. I promised. I did once already, in the summer. Before...well. We looked at catalogues together. He ate four sheep."

Bård waved his hands. "Finn, we’re talking about a wolf. Not even a wolf. A doomsday weapon that looks like a wolf."

"He’s a weapon the way that I’m a cherry tree," Finn said. "They changed us. He needs the things a wolf needs. Food. Companionship. Ridiculous amounts of mead, if you ask me. Besides, it’s not just about him. I want to be a man who keeps his promises."

"Fair enough," Vegard said. "Cherry tree?"

Finn grinned. Now that Vegard was looking for it, he could see that the radial pattern in Finn’s irises caught the light like polished wood grain. "You’ve got to start with something. Melantha doesn't know exactly, and I'll thank you not to tell her, but her specifications were, dark and sweet and not too tall."

"What’s Brynjar, then?"

"Aspen: slim and golden and stately," said Brynjar, gesturing at himself with a little flourish. 

Vegard gestured at the orchid that topped his latte. "So...does this freak you out?"

Brynjar held his hands up. "If you wants to adorn thy beverages with the severed genitalia of one of my very distant relatives, far be it from me to telling you you cannot."

"Those grow back," Finn pointed out. "Well, they do for flowers. I grow my own lettuce and spinach now, and take a leaf at a time, but I still can’t bring myself to do most root vegetables."

Bård's phone rang. He checked the display. "It's Maria. Excuse me." He got out of his chair and moved a little away from the table.

"I hope everything's okay," Finn murmured.

Brynjar waved the thought away. "A mere scheduling confliction. Here are your chance, Finn. Ask him."

"Ask me what?" Vegard said.

Finn wouldn't look at him. Brynjar said, "He wondering about how much you understand. Whether you would regret that which you did for us."

"What?"

Finn took a quick look around the shop, and made a little doodling motion on his forehead.

"What? No! Never!" He smiled wistfully. "It was the last magic I did, and the best, and I’m glad I got the chance before it all went away."

Finn was looking at him with very large eyes. "Vegard... Bloody hell!"

It was that, more than anything that helped him put it together. "Wait, are you saying...?"

"Brynjar was right!" Finn said. "Oh my gods! You had no idea, did you? All this time!"

"Brynjar was right," Vegard echoed, stunned. "‘No matter what it costs.’ I gave all my magic to the two of you."

"Not gaved per se," Brynjar said, "but you beginned a huge transformification in two different people. What did you thought that was powered by? What thought you, all those months?"

"I thought it was post-concussion syndrome. I didn’t say anything to the doctors, though, because I didn’t know how I could explain to them getting a head injury that severe without some sort of hospital record. "

Finn shook his head. "Your head is just fine. That was us. Two at a time was kind of ridiculous. But you didn’t know, and I sure didn't know, and I guess if no one tells you, how are you supposed to?" He laughed nervously. " _Now_ do you regret it?"

Vegard thought about it, and shook his head. "No. Because the magic was something extra, and I gave it up so you could have the things that everyone else has." 

"Thank you," Finn whispered, wood-grain eyes shining with tears. Abruptly, he turned and glared at Brynjar. " _Don't_ say you told me so."

"I has said nothing," Brynjar said innocently. 

"You were...you were _looking_ it."

Bård switched off his phone and rejoined them. "Sorry. Sorry." He glanced at Finn, his brow furrowed in concern, and put a hand on the man's shoulder, giving him a small, sympathetic smile. 

For another half an hour, they talked about nice, safe things: the wives, the kids, the shows. Vegard drank his second orchid latte. And Bård's, because his brother thought it tasted like drinking perfume, and he thought it like it was a bad thing. 

Brynjar was in the middle of telling them about what Vinael was doing in his cell at that moment--"He are wondering, worrying, questioning, raging, ruminating, rationalizing, fretting, musing, pondering, doubt..."--when there was a creaking noise from the café roof, and he looked up with a frown. "Pardon," he said. "Alas, I must away. I are parked very illegaliciously." He stood, and swirled his duster around him.

"I should go too," Bård sighed. "The call was Maria saying that Gunvor's caterer called and rescheduled, so the invitations have to be done tomorrow, and she still needs another pair of eyes to help her pick three more paintings for the opening, so Papa's looking after bedtime."

"Next month, then," Finn said, draining the dregs of his latte, taking one more forkful of mint icing, and putting on his coat. He hugged each of the brothers in turn. "Thank you," he whispered to Vegard. "Again."

Bård cocked his head. "Are you _sure_ this isn't about the beer?" 

Vegard looked from Finn--who suddenly looked very nervous--to Brynjar--who looked merely expectant. "A debt we owed," he said. "I already settled it from my personal accounts, so don't worry." 

Outside, darkness had fallen. The air smelled of woodsmoke and the promise of snow. The wind was brisk and wild, and carried just a hint of the sea. 

Brynjar had already disappeared down an alleyway, walking stick tap-tapping away. Finn, walking towards the tram stop, turned around and pulled a hand from his pocket to wave. 

Bård turned to Vegard. "I see you every day," he said, "so I didn't notice before: you do look better. A lot better."

"I feel a lot better." Vegard tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and spread his arms to the wind. "I feel like I’m waking up. To a whole new world. Everything is different now, Bård."

"I’m glad," Bård said.

"I’ll get it back, though," Vegard said, with a touch of defiance. "I got everything else back."

"I hope so." Bård clasped his shoulder briefly, and started to walk. Over his shoulder, he said, "See you tomorrow, Vegard."

"Yeah." As Bård walked away, Vegard called after him, "Practice!"

Vegard crossed the street, and walked up the hill to where he’d parked his car. Even last month, this walk would have left him shaky and breathless, but today he took it with ease, and a little more than ease. For the first time in seven months, he had energy to spare. He wanted to run, he wanted to jump, he wanted to chase the wind to the horizon. "I’m ready," he told the night. "I’m back." 

Far down the hillside, lit by the streetlights, he saw a figure walking, approaching a car. Even without the link's help, the walk told him it was his brother. 

Abruptly, the streetlight nearest to Bård flickered out, leaving a pool of darkness between him and the vehicle. Vegard saw him hesitate at its edge. Then Bård spread a hand, and a pinpoint of light appeared. 

" _We’re_ back," Vegard amended, and got into his car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: The Charlatans' "Opportunity" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itOlgJBsSeY

**Author's Note:**

> For starters, I'm aware that the schedule that's been released for I Kveld Med Ylvis plays havoc with this timeline. That's right--this can't ever happen in real life, and I'm crushed. Crushed, I tell you.
> 
> But this story--and the one before it, and the two lovely men who inspired it--sustained me through the worst six months of my life. They made me laugh about things that had been making me cry and freak out. They gave me many fun things to do with my brain for the eight hours every day that I rushed around on my machine making car parts. They encouraged me to sharpen faculties that I thought I had no hope of ever using again. And now I'm back in a job that I love, that I'm good at, that has a future, that might just with a bit of frugality be able to get me to Oslo this winter. I think I probably would have gotten my job back without Ylvis, but...I'm not sure that I still would have been the kind of person who could do it. 
> 
> I would like to thank: 
> 
> Sandra Schneeberger and the University of Zurich for graciously letting me crash their MOOC on the Eddas, even though it was clear very early on that the crashing was going to be accompanied by burning. 
> 
> Authors who don't know I exist, but have influenced me immeasurably through their wonderful work: Susanna Clarke, China Miéville, John Crowley, Neil Gaiman, Connie Willis, and dirgewithoutmusic. 
> 
> Authors who do know I exist, and have in addition to their amazing work helped me out with support and advice and feedback and general awesomeness: Roz Kaveney, Jennifer Stevenson, LillieWescott, Humbae, saakaat, ringading, and hoosonja, whose "Dobbelganger" made me realize that the world needs more Brynjar Kvam. 
> 
> Derek, Kathryn, Cathérine, Bridget, Sam, and Sarah, for using their academic superpowers to convince me that this was okay. 
> 
> Mona Lisa, Quirentia, Lundsdotter, and all the other translators. But particularly Mona Lisa, for separating out Brynjar Kvam's bits. 
> 
> addictedtoylvis and canadasherligste for compiling valuable character information on Finn Weber. 
> 
> Mom, who I really thought was just humouring me until one day while we sat watching Vegard on Brille, she said, "Oh my GOD he's so cute!"
> 
> My beloved Will, for helping me with the physics of magic, the dimensions of a giant wolf, and some particulars of narration; for being remarkably tolerant about waking up every morning to find me peering owlishly at bus timetables and Google Maps and whatnot; and for being a nerd with delicious twirlable curls and a gorgeous voice. 
> 
> Everyone who read this thing, and everyone who liked it, and everyone who commented. 
> 
> These two Norwegian comedians I'm sort of partial to. Darned if I can remember their names.


End file.
